A Walk In the Woods
by Literary Alchemist
Summary: This started off as an alternate Silent Hill 3. Heather and Angela cameos. Chapter 22 up.
1. MIA

A Walk in the Woods.

Chapter One – MIA.

_In the lakeside resort town of Silent Hill, the wind plays a childish soccer with detritus on the streets, and as the midnight town slumbers, a Happy Burger wrapper is pinned to a lamppost, mercilessly molested by the wind, then torn away again and flung up and out to the moonlit skies. A poster remains, stuck to the post. 'HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL?' it shrieks._

_A picture of a young blonde above the caption; 'Blonde, 16, female. Missing for 2 weeks. $1,000 reward for information.' There are posters all over the place now that we stop to look, on every streetlamp, storefront and bus stop. Despite the poster's claim, Kate has been missing for over a month now, and her mother is ill with concern, crying out even in her sleep 'Where has my little girl gone?'_

Woods, lots of woods. It was sunny and pleasant when she started out on her walk through the woods, and the greenery brushing against her calves and occasionally tickling her thighs were refreshing with the dew of the morning, and she had been glad of her choice of outfit. A pair of tough, comfortable suede boots, a snug and short denim skirt (though not too snug to allow her to clamber over rocks and branches) and a bodywarmer over a t-shirt had seemed just the right attire for that warm and fresh morning. The sunshine playing on her golden hair had made her feel good and golden in herself, and the trees seemed like elder brothers, watching her play and joining in with reverent and joyful smiles of their own. The whole forest had been her playground, the trees her playmates, and the wildlife her jesters and pets. But then the sun had faded, the air had grown cold and the breeze had wandered up and down her with chilly and disrespectful fingers.

The greenery brushing against her bare legs now seemed to cling with obscene intent, the trees leered at her discomfort, and took pleasure in her fear and newfound knowledge of her smallness, her fear of the frailty her slight figure left her with. As for the wildlife…best not to think about that. She had seen a few wolves earlier, but only from afar, and now prayed that she would never see them again, and certainly not out here, exposed and alone. Turning, she made her way back to the edge of the wood. That intention, though, proved to be more difficult in practice than in theory.

'Figures,' she muttered, 'in theory, there's no damn difference between theory and practice. In practice – OOMPH!' Swearing under her breath, she scrabbled on the forest floor to pick herself up and found that her ankle had become somehow entangled in a tree root.

'You can _not_ be serious,' she grunted angrily, twisting round to see the problem better. 'Now how the hell…' As she brought her hands round to try to free her entrapped ankle from the hoary grip of the root, her left hand knocked against something hard, her right against something hard and cold. Her train of thought interrupted, she looked down and discovered a small plastic compass, and a sheathed Buck knife. Both had obviously been bought by someone going for strength and durability, which brought up the next questions, where was the owner, and why would he or she have left such important items in the middle of this huge forest? Stuffing the compass into her bodywarmer pocket, she clipped the knife sheath to her skirt waistband, and leant forward to work her ankle free. That was when the howling began, welling up from behind the forest growth into an animal choir, singing a terrible requiem.

Frantically, Kate tugged and twisted at her ankle. It sounded as though the howling were all around her, though what with the fog that had grown up within the forest since the weather changed it was impossible to tell anything for sure.

'Come _ON_, you son of a _BITCH_!' she yelled at the top of her voice, and then clapped her hand over her mouth, realising with a sudden hot flush of fear that she had just alerted anything hungry and unfriendly within hearing distance that here was an early lunch just waiting to happen. In a panic now, she slipped the knife from its sheath and began hacking desperately at the root, which suddenly…was not around her ankle any more. In her frenzy of stabbing, she only just managed to stop herself from an impromptu surgery, though a sharp pain told her that she had at least pierced the skin under her boot. _Still_, she thought as she climbed to her feet and let her pale legs take the weight of her body, _it could be worse, and at least I can walk._ Just then the howling began again, and this time it was definitely closer. _Or perhaps a quick jog would be a better idea_, she corrected herself. She took a last look at the tree that'd tripped her, a malevolent old willow, shook a pale fist at it, and took off in the opposite direction to the howls.


	2. Taking Stock

**Chapter 2 – Taking Stock of the Situation.**

After what felt like an eternity of flight, she slowed down again, the breath burning cold in her throat as her greedy lungs sucked at the air around. Sapped even of the energy to stand up straight, she bent to relax the pressure on her chest, hands pressed against her bare knees to support herself, her perspiration suddenly turning to freezing clamminess across her skin, chilling her exposed legs and arms and pasting her t-shirt to her breathless chest in a frozen caress.

The place she had come to a halt in appeared to be a kind of clearing, a small patch of grass she could just see across before the tree-lined edges and ever-present fog obscured her view of the world beyond.

'Alright then,' she said aloud. 'I'm lost, cold, and,' testing the strength of her injured ankle, 'mildly wounded. All I have is an outfit made for a short walk in the sun, a knife, and a compass. Time to think.'

'The wolves or whatever seem to have gone for now, anyway. But there's no way to tell where the hell they've gone _to_, or when I might run into them again. Plus the trees don't seem to like me anymore. Huh! Maybe they're ticked that I did a little flower-picking. Just a few white flowers, guys! Come on, you're that ticked at me for _that_?' From the surrounding woods, silence was her stern reply, and she sat down in the opening, rather than with her back against a bough. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice…not likely, pal. Taking the compass from her pocket, Kate found one of the flowers in question pressed against the plastic construct. Obviously the weedy little bloom hadn't been designed by Mother Nature for close encounters of any kind, especially not with hardened plastics designed to withstand anything short of a nuclear winter.

Manmade artefact and natural flora had fought for space in the confines of her pocket, and the genius of Man had won out, sap from the crushed flower now made the compass slick and hard to handle, so Kate wiped it off as best as she could with a pocket handkerchief, cleaning her hands as she went. A bit of spittle against the handkerchief halfway through to ensure the cleanliness of the compass brought her tongue into contact with the sap itself and left a sharp, bitter aftertaste in her mouth. Thankfully, though, the taste was soon forgotten in a second, sweeter aftertaste, which faded almost as soon as it arrived, taking the less pleasant forerunner with it. Studying the compass, Kate found that she was facing due north, a reassuring fact as the edge of the woods lay only a few blocks south of her family home.

'Due North, then,' she muttered, still wary of arousing the interest of any nearby creature, great or small. 'Which should, eventually, get me back to town.' Rising, she swayed once, feeling her ankle's weakness, and walked out of the clearing, compass in front, due north.

Silence returned to the clearing, and the fog that had billowed in the small blonde's wake stirred, waved, and settled. In the deafening silence, something emerged from the woods, found the girl's tracks, and set off on her trail. Though pretty, lithe of limb and fair of figure, Kate had never been popular beyond a few friends, and the news that she had acquired a follower all of her very own would have been something of a surprise to her.

Would have been, had she only known.


	3. An Invitation To Lunch

**Author's Note - This is was a lot longer than the previous two chapters. I've trimmed them down now. Enjoy  
**

**Chapter 3 – An Invitation To Lunch**

Though the fog was thick, Kate could see at least six feet in either direction, an ability for which she profoundly thanked whichever small gods or angels controlled this otherworldly wood. At least this way, she wouldn't be so blind as to not see a wolf or…well, whatever else there was in here with her until it was too late. It was the 'whatever else' that was giving her the trouble, and causing her to feel so profoundly scared.

Shivering, she rubbed her hands on her arms to massage some warmth into them and tried desperately not to think about what the fog could be hiding. She chided herself aloud, though not too loud, 'Come on Kate, it's not as if you've never been out here before…even if you don't know exactly where just here is' (an uneasy glance into the fog swirling at her passing) 'it's just birds and, and squirrels, and moose...' (another rub) 'or is that meese? Ok, so there were a few wolves, but they were headed the other way…No, of course you don't know where they headed off to, and yes that could have been them, but be sensible, what could possibly track anything in this muck? Be sensible and stay calm' Kate was very good at giving herself good advice, even if she wasn't very good at taking it.

A sudden cracking of twigs behind her made her start and turn, the ball of tension in her stomach tightening almost to the point of implosion.

'What the hell?' she whimpered. 'Wha'?' As she watched, a black shape on four legs emerged silently from the fog to her right, off to the west. Kate bit her lip in an agony of fear _Oh Goddamnit this time I'm really gonna get killed, it's a damn wolf it's a damn wolf it's a damn wolf!_ The shape crossed to the middle of her field of vision, mostly hidden by undergrowth, staying close to the ground, snuffling at a scent, then stopped dead. All with that incredibly eerie silence which we expect of a distant alien star, or the daemonic dance of some many-ribbed monster of the deep sea. How this silent creature could possibly be terrestrial was an impossible thought. It remained where it was. Crouched. Motionless. A solid object in an empheral forest, where north could be south and east west at the slightest lapse of concentration, it should have been an anchor to her fear of the vanishing wood yet instead it was to her the very embodiment of all her nameless fears. Shaped and painted in the very colour of night, it stood crouched unseen, hidden doubly by fog and brush, making that little which was seen a terrible sillhouette. Whimpering very quietly, Kate took two shaking steps back, though without hope of escape. A mistake. Her feet became entangled in each other and she fell to the ground in a terrified heap. Suddenly the beast raised its head, a great shaggy monstrosity of a skull with deformed ears standing fully erect. The dreadful snout snuffled the air obscenely, jaws open and tongue no doubt lolling out, drooling at the thought of young, fresh meat upon which to feed. The head turned, faced her, and the unseen undergrowth rustled as it began its approach.

Kate's conscious mind was a last bastion in a swirling cold sea, a Titanic of sense. No matter how strong the outer hull, once breached, the whole ship goes down. _No no no please no not like this!_ With a last effort of terrified will, Kate scrabbled backwards, sliding on her behind back and back, legs asplay, skirt riding up and muddied. The beast was still moving. Not hurrying, it seemed to savour every moment of anticipation, moving with all the purpose and inevitability of gravity pulling the midnight sky down on you as you watch, pinned to the earth. The beast came on, and now other shadows detached themselves from the surrounding undergrowth, growling and slavering. These she could see, pacing low and close to the earth, hungry as the gates of Hell itself, and proud as the prince of that same damned kingdom, they closed in. Almost in tears now, Kate gibbered and scrabbled back and back in a frenzy of panic, a delicious hell of impotence as her stomach collapsed within her, her lithe, long legs lost their strength, refused to push, and the last bastion of self control fell to the ground, broken and defeated. The grey wolves surrounding her turned with uniform purpose and began towards her, growling forgotten, all intent on the kill. The black shape, though, was faster and leapt, landing on her chest with a heat and weight that knocked her from her propped-up position to flat on her back. The sheer weight and smell of that massive animal, pinning her helpless to the earth, broke the last strand of her mind. Everything faded from her sight, dying in the mist, and she lost her fear, her despair melting in the apathy of the waking dead. Strangely, the absence of her fear didn't leave a void, the bestial heat burning in from her captor shot straight through her garments into her heart, and left only an anger within her, a raging defiance, that although she had had it, and no further luck was left to her, she didn't have to like it.

The last thing she heard in this world was a baying and yelping of canines, demon mongrels fighting over their next feed. _Knock yourselves out, you bastards,_ she thought with her last conscious effort, _there's not much here, but I hope you die fighting over it, and choke on what you win. Choke, and die…_

**A/N - Re-structured. Reviews always welcome.**


	4. A Knife in the Park

A sudden shock of wetness and heat. She slammed her eyes open wide, her heart thumping wildly in her chest, the overgrown foliage of the forest roof her only view. _Ok.._ she thought _what the HELL just happened? I'm supposed to be bloody bits in those mutts' beliies._ Kate groaned and propped herself up on her elbows, then on her hands, drawing her legs in to support herself. _This feels familiar_ she thought groggily. _Something's wrong though, I should be dead by now, where did..those….wolves…._ Her train of thought slowed and coasted gently off the rails as she took in her surroundings. The small clearing in which she'd been attacked, previously so bare of anything save a straggling of bushes, was strewn with gore and pieces of wolf. Paws, tails, and viscera littered the ground, and in the middle of the carnage, the black monster of her crushing unconsciousness, that massive canine, lying asleep, curled up on itself and slumbering as peacefully as a contented child.

As Kate beheld the scene, frozen with horrified fascination, she became conscious of a weak struggling in the mound. One of the wolves was still alive, and was making a last desperate effort to get to her, to at least take one bite, one tasty morsel, of this so sweet flesh. The beast in the centre stirred, lifting its head to watch the wolf's attempt in an almost lazy manner, like that of a well-to-do city gentleman watching an urchin's pathetic attempts to ape his elders and betters. The wolf, however, was deadly serious, and kept up the approach, jaws slavering, razor teeth at the ready. The beast in the centre looked on, and raised its head to meet Kate's bewildered gaze. The hungry creature crawling in no longer terrified her, the heat of that insane defiance born when she had thought herself at death's door still burned in her heart, but she knew her body to be too weak to withstand an attack. She tried to crawl back as before, but her arms gave way, and she slumped to the ground, back flat, knees bent, helpless as any mother in birth or any child just born. Turning her head took effort, almost more than she had, but she rolled her head to the side to take in the scene, to watch the approaching animal. _I may be lunch, but I'm not gonna be scared of some wounded mutt!_ she thought furiously. A snort behind the mutt made her start, and the wolf check its step and turn to see the source. A flash of black, a yelp, and the wolf exploded into a shower of gore and bone, its head rolling towards her, and bumping against her booted foot. The black beast, still with an air of contemptuous disdain, padded silently from the fresh corpse to the severed head, picked it up and returned it to the corpse.

Standing over the last of the pack, the beast locked eyes with Kate, saw her bewildered stare, and brushed at its snout with its forepaw, wiping away the blood and tissue in an almost human act of cleanliness. Snout pointed to the forest roof, it sniffed the air and turned to the woods behind it and let loose a long low growl, purest menace in audible form. A bush shook and was suddenly stilled, as though another wolf had suddenly thought better of attempting a late lunch. The beast rose up to its full height and bayed at the retreating noise, as though to mock its cowardice.

Kate, having regained strength to prop herself up, had seen all this and was beginning to reconsider her impression of the beast. Certainly it was a monster of some sort, and certainly it was excessively violent and bloodthirsty (though come to think of it, she'd not seen it eat any of its kill) but somehow she felt that she could, if not trust it, at least not fear it unnecessarily. So she stayed still when it approached her, at first in a direct line with her feet, as though it were simply going to clamber over her groin and hips to sit on her chest once more, but then turning at the last minute to walk around to her side. Stopping and sitting by her shoulder, it looked straight into her steel-gray eyes, eyes that shone like an immortal blade, and she looked back into its own eyes, dark as the midnight of infinite space, yet with none of that horrible emptiness the science-worshippers exalt in. Dark as the roots of the mountains, silent as the earth, those eyes were nonetheless filled with life, a life and wisdom older then the earth itself. In that instant Kate both knew and forgot, she knew suddenly her state and struggle, and forgot her weakness and despair, and even though she was still no more informed of the whys and wherefores of her situation, she knew its importance, its inherent weirdness, and forgot the idea of giving up and dying. The beast lent forward, still holding her gaze, and placed its warm tongue gently on her brow, a bestial kiss of the best sort. Kate, holding the enormous head, leant over the monstrous snout, and gently planted a kiss of her own on the top of that massive and terrible skull.

The moment ended, both rose to their feet, and the beast walked off, in the opposite direction to the would-have-been intruder. The girl followed. It would have been impossible not to, As impossible as a twin not following its sibling, and with a similar feeling. Moving silently, the pair left the clearing and walked on, heading north, though Kate knew it not. And in the clearing, the cowardly follower returned, snivelling, and followed their trail.

The pair had been walking for some time when Kate became aware of the sound of pursuit. Not the stealthy approach of a forest animal (for, whatever else the wolf-mutts had been, they had at least been stealthy) nor the casual jaunt of a pleasure-walker, who walks as and when he wishes and cares not who sees him, but the hesitant sounds of a human trying to follow without giving the pursued a hint of the pursuit. A clumsy human, at that, for their pursuer had stumbled at least twice since she became aware of him, and the noise was such that there could be no doubt that this was a man. Kate over-rode the urge to look around, to stop, to panic. The guy didn't want to panic her, didn't want her to know he was there, and so was obviously handing back a decent distance, insofar as it was possible to tell in this muck, and that was fine by her. As an aside, she looked down to her companion, the black beast, and was reassured again. It hadn't let the mutts make a meal of her, it wouldn't let some stupid oaf make sport of her. She was dismayed, therefore, when the beast stopped suddenly, and snuffled the air enthusiastically.

"What're you _doing_?" she muttered, crouching low to its head, "if we stick around here, he'll _find_ us!" The beast turned its head majestically, extended the very tip of its tongue in her direction, and leapt forward in a bound that turned into a run.

"Hey! Wait!" she cried after it, almost falling over herself yet again as she turned her standing start into a stumbling run. The sounds of pursuit behind her took on a new urgency and loudness as she pursued her guide through the fog, but she paid that little attention, her only goal was to not lose sight of her terrible guide, and so she crashed on after it, regardless. The beast, however, showed no sign of wanting to lose her and remained in sight as they ducked and leapt under branch and over fallen bough until suddenly they were at the edge of the forest, in a mist-laden green space she recognised as a local park, close to the Silent Hill shopping mall. The beast, a mere five feet from her own feet, turned and snorted at the woods behind them, from which the crashing sounds of pursuit emanated faintly but unmistakably. Her guide had not lost her, but she had not lost her pursuer. Kate wiped her hands against her skirt in a Freudian gesture of anxiety and desire to clean herself of that wood. What could she do? If she ran across the park into the mall, that'd only leave clearer tracks for the man to follow, and if she stayed here he'd certainly find her. Wiping her hands again, she brushed against a hard, cold shape on the waistband of her skirt. The knife! She had completely forgotten it in her tangle with the wolf-pack, not that it would have helped against such dreadful numbers, but in a one-on-one with youth on her side, maybe she stood a chance if she could get the jump on him. She turned to return to the forest edge (the better to surprise you, my dear) and saw her fresh bootprints leading out to her. That'd never work.

As if sensing her thoughts, the beast took her boots gently in its jaws and pulled, head butting against her calves. Boots might leave an easy print, but bare feet? It was at least worth a try. She bent down to unzip her boots, almost sitting on the beast's head in the process ("Sorry doggy!") and turned them to face the park. She crept up to a nearby tree, unsheathed the six-inch blade and crouched in the brush to wait. The beast, however, merely turned to face her and lowered itself down on its forelegs, as though bowing adieu, then turned and bounded away, leaving her life as silently as it had entered. Kate waited patiently.

And so it was that the man in the woods, the craven follower, came to find a pair of empty boots with no further prints, save those of some massive hellhound and, standing bewildered, felt the cold prickle of a knife-tip against the base of his spine, froze solid, and heard a young, steady voice speaking decisively from behind him.

"You just stay where you are, pal. Don't you move a fucking muscle. You and me, we're gonna have us a little chat…"


	5. Getting to Know You

**A/N - Once again, the cat ran away with the typewriter. Sorry it's so long. Let me know what you think, otherwise I can't improve it. Thanks.**

Chapter 5 – Getting to Know You

The man raised his hands, slowly and deliberately.

"Easy, kid. I'm unarmed. I ain't out ta hurtcha. How about you take the pig-sticker outta my neck and we can talk, huh?'

"Sure, I'll take it away and you'll jump me. How about NO dumbass?" Kate applied a little more pressure to the blade, just to get the point across. "I'm askin' the questions, so you can just stand there till you've convinced me to let you live. And in case you're thinking about getting smart, I have another hand, and that has another knife. So just  
stay there, and you might walk away from this in one piece" The bluff was incredible, her heart beating an insane maraca within her chest, but she dared not do otherwise. This guy had been following for who knew how long, and had obviously not had an afternoon picnic in mind. The stranger swallowed hard, made a visible effort to calm himself, and spoke slowly, picking out each word carefully. "Ok, I'll stay put. What do you wanna know?"

"First, let's get more comfortable." Kate declared, shifting the blade tip to the base of the man's skull. He flinched at the touch of the cold steel "Ah-ah-ah, stay still, motherfucker, or I'll do more than tickle your dumb ass" He settled, though visibly shaken. "Better. Now stay still, I'm gonna check something real quick. Don't try and get clever, neither, it wouldn't suit you." Heart racing at the audacity of this, Kate stepped in closer and frisked the guy's front with her free hand, praying he didn't move. At this angle and distance, if he so much as sneezed, the knife would go straight through his neck, whether she wanted it to or not. Checking his belt, she found a large revolver, and  
snorted, disgusted.

"Unarmed, huh? Yeah, that works. God-damned coward."

"Nono, wait, I can explain," spluttered the quivering wretch in front of her. She shoved him forward and trained the gun on him "Shut up, dick. Turn around, lemme see your face."

"My name's not Dick…' he began, looking bemused.

"That was a description, not a name. Tell me your real name, though I might go on calling you dick instead. It probably suits you better" spat the angry girl. Angry and scared. She had come within inches of being shot by this psycho and now he wanted to act like it was all some big misunderstanding? Not gonna happen.

Swallowing again, the man stumbled back, tripped over himself, and fell on his ass. Hard. "Yeah, it hurts, don't it? Now talk, dick."

"Ok, ok, just…don't shoot. Christ!" The scruffy, snivelling man on the grass ran his hands through his hair nervously, gulping down air in greedy draughts. Calmer now, he looked the young woman over. And over. And over. Kate, meanwhile, was beginning to shake with the adrenaline, making her still more anxious and thus angrier. "You know, kid, you got a helluva mouth on you..." he began, his gaze crawling up her thighs. Furious, Kate interrupted. A bang from the revolver and a patch of earth next to the bastard's hand disappeared. _That's shut him up, thank God_, thought Kate, almost hysterically, _maybe if I shoot a little to the right he'll start talking again_ ._ Gunshot sounds, the on/off switch for psychos. Hell, I'm starting to sound like a crazy person, I need to sit down, all this is getting to me_. Startled, the wretch on the ground had fallen silent, and was watching her face with a fearful expression, as though trying to guess her intent in missing the shot. In silence, the two watched each other, both wary, both terrified (though only one showed it, and that through massive effort).

The man began to appear uneasy, shifting nervously, looking into the woods behind Kate, looking to the left and right, and eventually even turning away from the girl, still aiming for his heart, and craning his neck to see behind him. Kate rolled her eyes in disbelief. What the hell? This guy comes out of nowhere, followed her through the woods, tried to sneak up on her, and now couldn't even pay attention to her with a gun pointed at him? _Whoever said the truth was stranger than fiction must have been talking about people like this_, she decided. "Hey, dick!" she yelled "I'm not boring you here, am I?" That got his attention back. He turned around slowly, as though fearing what a sudden move on his part might cause, though from her or whatever he had been looking for in the mist, she couldn't tell. Raising a hand slowly, palm outward, he spoke.

"Ok, sweetheart, you want a chat? So let's chat. My name's Nathan Crawley, I'm here on vacation, I just got here, so just relax a little, wouldya?"

_Here on vacation,_ thought Kate, _just got here. Right. That explains getting lost in the woods, anyway, the idiot. Still, he was lying about being armed.. _.She forced herself to relax, lowering the gun. He was sprawled on the ground and wouldn't be making any fast moves any time soon, so she listened, willing herself to stay as calm and relaxed as the weird situation would allow.

"I was out in the woods," continued Crawley, "just like you, when the fog hit, I saw you ahead of me and followed you to try to get out of the forest, that's all. I guess you're twitchy cause of the wolves, huh?" Kate nodded vigourously at this. "Yeah, the woods, those wolf things, the monster of a Dog, or...whatever the hell it was" He cut himself off again, shuddering. Kate figured he must have seen the Dog leading her out of the woods and not likeed it. Well, neither had she to begin with, but now...

"I like the Dog," she answered, "Wherever he's gotten to now, I'm glad I found him. If it hadn't been for him, I wouldn't have made it this far. There was a pack of wolves wanted to eat me alive, you see, but he...well, I guess he didn't...want...that..." She trailed off. Whatever she had been going to say about the wolves, in response to his enquiring look when she mentioned the wolves, or about the Dog, melted in the heat of realisation. _I didn't find him, though_, she thought, _he found me. He was following a scent...or something. And since when does one dog take on a whole wolf pack? And survive, too, if we're gonna talk about that?_

"He didn't _want_ it?" scoffed the man on the cold grass. "Sure, kid, whatever you say. All I can say is, if a dog of any kind can _want_ something, or _not want_ something, it's for a big piece of steak or a nice bone to chew on…or a nice young bitch to fuck. Whatever that _thing_ is, it's no damn mutt. It's gotta be some kind of...some kind of monster. Like those things...those things I..." He caught the look on her face, saw her begin to lift the gun again, and realised what he must have sounded like. "Nonono, wait! I mean, just that...I.. Hell, I guess it was a trick of the fog or something, but I thought I saw something else in the woods. Musta been a weird shape tree or something, I guess..." he finished lamely, mumbling the last words into his chest.

_Poor stupid bastard_, thought Kate, her heart softening for the wretched man in front of her, _he's probably even more freaked than I am_. Aloud, she said "Alright, look, I don't particularly trust you, but I believe you're lost and scared like me. If we split up, we're in deep crap. I know this town, lived here all my life, and there's a mall not far from here. We should be safe to stay there until the fog lifts and we can both head home, how about it?" As she spoke, she eyed the man's shirt, tattered and slightly bloodstained, the red swelling on his hand, as though it had been hit or crushed. _Whatever this guy thinks he saw in a weird tree, what he knows he saw definitely did him some damage. We both need to get someplace safe_.

Ten minutes walk took them up a path they found and across some miniature train tracks.The sort of tracks made for small rollercoaster-type cars made to look like steam trains that run round and round with noisy screaming kids. No kids in evidence, though, nor any noise at all. The silence and cold closed in on all sides, chilling the girl's bare arms and legs, her imagination showing her tendrils of fog creeping up and down her, seeping through her hair, into her bodywarmer, between her legs, invading her with alien cold. Her fear grew, and she picked up her pace, not noticing that she had left her travelling companion behind in the fog until she saw the mall in front of her. Looking around for Nathan, Kate noticed a canine body lying on the sidewalk. Her old friend from the forest? But no, he'd have come to greet her. Perhaps another wolf, wandering from the pack? Drawing the revolver from the waistband of her skirt, where she had holstered it when beginning the walk across the park (despite Nathan's assurances, she still didn't trust him with a weapon), Kate approached the prone figure, and gagged at the sight of it. It was the corpse of a wolf, but completely skinned. The most ghastly thing, though, was that it was still moving.

Suddenly, the corpse arose, opened its bloody eyelids, and fixed its dead eyes on her. Firing a panicked shot, Kate ran to the entrance of the mall, slamming the door on the bloody freak, bolted through the lobby, and stopped dead in the corridor she'd entered. Everything around her was shabby and disused, not simply because shopping hours were over and everyone had gone home, but looking as though the place were long abandoned. Flyers and advertisements were faded and torn, windows cracked and shutters down, and a trail of blood smeared across the floor to a service stairwell to her right. Shuddering, she headed away from the trail, into a Happy Burger to her left, and closed the door behind her, hearing it click to with a relieving finality. Even if the freak could get into the mall, it wouldn't get into the fast food joint. Shaken and shaking, she staggered to the counter and leant on it, head slumped over, completely alone in the place. Until a voice spoke directly in front of her.

"Welcome to Happy Burger, may I pretend to be interested in your order?"


	6. Happy Meals at Happy Burger

**A/N - Yeah, it's a long chapter. You'll manage.**

A voice spoke directly in front of her.

"Welcome to Happy Burger, may I pretend to be interested in your order?"

Katie's head, having lolled forward in exhaustion, snapped up, eyes wide open. The speaker's face was but an inch from her own, and the shock and proximity brought out a sharp scream from her as she half jerked, half threw herself backwards and away from the serving counter. The guy looked like hell in a Happy Burger outfit. Dishevelled, greasy, and haggard, he would have been rejected even to work in a waste collection truck, let alone in food preparation. Given the state of the mall, though, the only real surprise was that he was alive and well, as far as she could tell, anyway. He looked her up and down disdainfully, assessing her briefly.

"I guess you're new here, huh?" he asked from under a mop of greasy blond hair. Kate, however, was still gasping for breath and couldn't quite manage a full sentence, "You...it...the mall...dog...Wha'?" The youth in front of her snorted. "Yeah, I guess you really did just get here. I can tell by the way you look, ya know. You're sure as hell not one of _them_...but you're not one of _us_, either. Not yet, anyway."

"Uh...what...them? Us? What?" Kate managed to get her breath back and steadied herself, standing upright again. "Us? Them? And what're you talking about being _new here_? I've lived here all my life, and this isn't some little village. How would anyone think I'm new in town? Anyway," she continued, "I've lived in Silent Hill all my life, we're on Levine Street, near the elementary school. What? What's wrong?" The greasy boy had suddenly opened his eyes in shock, and started to back away from her. She could see his hands now, matted with burger blood, the grease of which had rubbed into his shirt cuffs. A long-sleeved red-and-white shirt, unusual uniform for a fast food place, the sleeves not even rolled up as a concession to the work, it didn't quite go with the peaked red paper hat, which came down in an angle over half his forehead, making it look as though management had wanted to mark him with a pyramid on his head.

"You live...you live near the school?" he managed to speak eventually. "You live near the school, and you've never seen the place like this? And now you're here, in front of me, and I... I..." Kate raised her hands, palms out, in the placating manner she remembered Crawley having used. "Woah, easy there. Lots of people live near the school, there's a great big residential block...remember? Come on, you act like you know this town, there's no reason to get freaked about a school full of noisy kids..." The boy, however, wasn't listening, or if he was, he was too terrified by whatever he had heard about the school, and was shaking his head in terror, and getting progressively whiter as she spoke. At the words 'noisy kids', though, he looked up, straight into her eyes for the first time in the conversation.

"Noisy kids?" he asked hoarsely. "Noisy...kids...? You know about the kids at the school? No. No, you couldn't. You just got here. Oh man, are you in for a surprise..." He started to giggle. "That school...you'll end up going back before you can go back... Hey, little schoolgirl...I hope you've done your homework..." Giggling hysterically now, he reached under the counter and brought out some items. Three small bottles of some kind of milk drink, a first aid kit, and a nondescript dull gray backpack. "You'll need these to get through your classes, schoolgirl...Haha...It's a tough class...and the mid-terms are a killer...Hahaha!"

Kate stepped up to the counter again to examine the items, the boy shrieked and flung himself back against the refrigerator behind him, whimpering. Ignoring the psycho kid (was there anyone _sane_ left in this town?) the girl peered at the label of one of the bottles. "----- he--th dr--k ----!" was all she could make out. She straightened up, asking "heth drk? What the hell is a..." She was addressing the empty air. The youth had disappeared, though with no sound of footsteps or of doors. "What the hell?" She leant forward, checking to see if he had hidden behind the counter. Nothing. "Asshole. Schoolgirl my ass! Where the hell did he go, though? There's no door back there, it's...it's off there to the right..." So she'd run into a deserted and bloody mall, from a zombie wolf, to be insulted and supplied by some greasy burger-flipper, who could apparently disappear into thin air.

The geek was worse than Crawley, who had either tried to kill her or...well, that didn't really bear thinking about. Or maybe he was just a lost tourist...well, he was certainly lost now. Head bowed in thought, she felt a pang of guilt for losing him in the fog...if he really had been an innocent in this, then the zombie wolves, and that one that she'd seen surely couldn't be the only one... Damn... and she'd taken his _gun_, too, the one thing that could have helped him against those...those _monsters_ must have... _So that's what he was talking about!_ she realised, _some kind of monsters, he said. He must have seen something even worse out there...or..._ Then she remembered the look on his face while he'd been eyeing her up from the ground. He'd been pleased to see what he saw, but had looked as though he'd seen her before. _How long had be been following me? I mean, how long had he **really** been following me? God, that look on his face, I bet he was gonna..._

Oh you gotta be kidding me!" she muttered at the counter, "he may have been a tourist, but he sure as hell didn't get lost by accident. The damn perv had been following me. I'll be it was him the Dog growled at. Ah, hell!" In frustration and fury, she stomped her foot and pounded the counter as hard as she could, making the bottles bounce next to the backpack. Damn it!

You know," she said, addressing the empty air, "just _once_ today I'd like to meet someone who isn't out to kill me or rape me, or insult me and vanish!" She glared at the label again, daring it to make more sense this time around, but with no results. "And what the **fuck** is a heth drk, anyway!"

"A _health drink_, my dear girl, is a _drink_ for your _health_" came a calm voice behind her. She spun round as though goosed, turning to face the new speaker. A tall man in a dark trenchcoat sat at the table to her left, smoking quietly with one hand, a coffee cup in the other, an ashtray in front of him. He looked like he could have been sat there all day, certainly not as if he had just arrived. "And the first aid kit...well, I trust I don't have to explain _that_ to you?" he continued. Furious, she grabbed the bag, stuffed the bottles and kit into it and marched up to the table, leaning over it and, grabbing him by the collar, hissed into his face. "You listen to me, mister, and you listen good! I've been attacked by wolves, trailed by some creepy pervert, laughed at by vanishing burger boys, and chased by zombie wolves, so don't you even **think** about getting an attitude with me! Now what the **hell** is going on!"

"If you let me go, I'll tell you," he choked, breath rasping against her grip. She pushed him back, hard, thumping his back into his seat, and sat down at the table. "Thank you so much," he croaked, "very kind of you, I'm sure" The girl didn't reply, was too angry and scared to do anything much other than glare at him and hope something normal would happen soon. Though in a world where no-one seemed to be using doors anymore and dead wolves jumped up off the sidewalk to bite your ass, it was probably hopeless to think like that.

The man in the coat swivelled round placing his back against the wall and his leg on the next seat along. Blood dripped from the Happy Burger facade outside, falling past the window and spattering on the concrete floortiles. The flourescent lights hummed gently, and the cup on the table steamed silently. In the silence, every sound was accented, and Kate began to adjust herself to the place, finding a terrible kind of peace in the lull of activity. Relaxing slightly, though keeping a hand on the gun holstered in her skirt waistband, she lent back and listened to the crackle of herbs as the man took another pull at his cigarette. He turned his head and looked directly into her eyes, his own dark and deep-set eyes watching her blue-gray ones watch him.

"You want to know what's going on?" he began. At her nod, he continued "I'm afraid that's one of the many things I can't tell you. All I can tell you is that you might not survive this place...No, not the Happy Burger, though the coffee might do for you if you're senseless enough to try it. The town. Silent Hill. There's..." he paused, picking out the words carefully, "...there's something..._wrong_ with this town, if get my meaning. Nothing's what it seems. Day and night are catastrophically mixed up, you can rarely see more than ten feet in front of you, and when you can you'll often find yourself wishing you couldn't. This isn't making much sense, I suppose?" He looked at her face, observed the set of her lips, pursed and angered, and the position of her hand on the table (the other tightening on the hilt of her revolver under the table and thus out of his sight) and sighed, resting his head back against the wall, breathing a new plume of smoke into the ceiling. "I can't give you many answers, because you've not asked many questions. That's the problem, really. Jeff said you were new here, I think he was right. Why don't _you_ tell me what happened and _then_ ask what's going on? That might work out better."

So Kate told him her name, her tender age, told him about her idea to have a short walk in the woods, that she'd intended to go back in about five minutes, then another five, and so on until she'd forgotten everything but exploring the woods. They had been so beautiful that they had seduced her into forgetting all else. She told him about the wolves, about the seemingly crazy pervert stalker who had mentioned monsters, the weapon she had taken from him, and about the monster that had chased her in here. "So I guess I _do_ know what you mean after all, that there _is_ something wrong with this place..." she trailed off. "But none of this makes _sense!_ I've lived here all my life, my home is on _Levine Street_, right near to the school! I used to go there, and shop across the bridge, and had my twisted ankle treated at Alchemilla hospital by a student nurse called Amy, she let me play with her stethoscope, and pretend I was a student nurse, too. And now...now the whole _town's_ gone 'wrong' and I'm being chased by creepy perverts and dead dogs? What the hell?" A mixture of shock and bewilderment was threatening to take her over now, and tears were forming in her eyes. The man leant forward, long hair framing his face, and stared straight into the darkness of her pupils, almost, she felt in her strung-out state, straight into her.

"You need to listen to me, Kate, and you _must_ remember this. You can't afford to let this place get to you. If you do, you'll never leave. _Never! _" He leant back again, taking a fresh cigarette from a coat pocket to calm his nerves, and left it in the ashtray after the first pull. "You don't want that, believe me" He looked her over, taking in her golden blonde hair, her bright eyes. His gaze lingered on her shapely body for a good few seconds before he realised what he was doing, nervously and quickly he looked away, as though with a great effort. Lifting the coffee cup to his mouth, he took a deep gulp of it, sighed in relief, and, setting it back down, resumed his watching of her, but now calm again, unfazed by what he saw.

"You mean I could...I could _die_ here? In this _wrong_...wrong version of my _hometown_?" She fought to keep the panic from rising again, blinked her tears back. "That's...that's more or less what I'm saying, yes." he answered. "But don't panic. Above all else, don't panic. Your fear is your worst enemy here, but also your greatest ally. Remember that, and your true self as well. Also, that which you must become. Kate Morgan. The one who will lead herself back to her life, although possibly with blood-stained hands."

"Blood-stained?" she gasped, "but I...I can't kill another person!" He shook his head, slowly, as though the weight of her denial made it hard to reply. "I didn't say a person, though that might have to be done, too. We'll see how it all plays out. The creepy guy you told me about, he sounds dangerous, and I'll bet you haven't seen the last of him. Be on your guard, always, and doubly around him. If you really did live on Levine Street, you'll want to head back there as soon as you can. Whatever's going on with you must have some root there, or at least you might find some kind of clue there. Now listen, and listen carefully, the school...Jeff was right, the school is very very much a feature of this...what did you call it? This _version_ of Silent Hill. _Stay out of it_! You must. Under no circumstances are you to go into that school"

Her eyes, sticky with dried, unwept tears, opened wide "But why not? I used to go there all the time when I was a kid, I even remember the stories they all told about the ghost of a girl who used to go there, one all the kids back then always used to pick on...Al..." The door flew open with an almighty crash, making her jump, the cup spill, and the glass ashtray jingle. As the new arrival slammed the door behind him and sagged against it, gasping for breath, she stared in absolute shock. It was Nathan Crawley again! Even in her schocked and dazed state, she noticed one other thing...the man in the coat had vanished.

**A/N - So? What do you think?**


	7. Friends Reunited

**A/N - Most of this you'll recognise from the Crawling - Ch 6. I'm doing what I can to keep things consistent, but it's getting tedious, so the stories are gonna go pretty much their own ways for a good bit, starting from the next chapter (in both stories)**

Still gasping for breath, Crawley shunted the garbage bin back to position, and grabbed another one from the other side of the burger bar, making doubly sure nothing could follow him in. Once Kate got over her surprise at seeing the man she had thought lost and dead in the fog, she managed to greet him. After a fashion.

"You again," she said from behind him, "I thought you'd gotten lost in the fog. You ok? I saw some kind of weird animal outside, scared the hell out of me. It didn't get you, did it?"

As he turned towards her, she brought the backpack up from under the table, her left hand rummaging inside, the other on the table itself. The ashtray smouldered next to her, the coffee cup with its spill down it further along the table.

"Yeah, I'm ok," he said "one came after me, but I guess it was asleep before it noticed me or something. That was too close for comfort, though. At least you believe me now about the monsters, right? Right?" She looked at him thoughtfully, considering things slowly, then turned and took the cigarette from the ashtray and held it up, watching it smoulder. _Yeah,_ she thought, _I know now that there are definitely monsters in this town. And you're one of them, pal _. She tapped the cigarette out into the ashtray, and put it back in. Turning to Crawley again she spoke.

"Ok. I believe you. Now what are we gonna do about it? The state this place is in...they only finished building it a couple years back, it hasn't even been open long enough to get as crappy as this. Makes me wonder if maybe it's not just a few things that've gone wrong. Maybe..." she considered the ashtray again, ran a slender finger up the spill on the coffee cup, "maybe it's the whole town that's been affected? Hah! Now maybe _you'll_ think that _I'm_ crazy" She brought the coffee cup up to her pretty little mouth, took a small sip, and gagged violently. Her face screwed up in horror and disgust, the coffee wasn't coffee at all. When she'd been bringing the cup up to her face, the liquid had been coffee brown, and smelt like roasted columbian, now it was a dark, viscous red, a sickly sweet taste of copper and...and something else she'd never tasted before. "Ugh! How the hell did he drink that?" she gasped, pushing the cup as far away as she could reach.

"Look, nevermind the coffee, we have to figure out how to get the hell out of here." Nathan looked amazed. _Of course,_ thought Kate, _he must think I'm crazy to worry about coffee, he has no idea it's not what it looks like. It tastes like...like when I cut my finger and sucked on the wound...he was drinking blood? But blood tastes like copper, kinda like pennies, and this is a kind of sickening sweet as well, so what... _Nathan interrupted her train of thought.

"Wait. Stop. How did _who_ drink that?" he asked slowly. "There's no-one else here, and no signs of other people." He went up to the counter and looked beyond it, saying he wanted to look for other doors. There was only one, off to the right, and that was padlocked closed from the inside. When he told Kate about the padlock, she went pale. _No way out,_ she thought, chilled through to the bone,_ no way out, but they both vanished without a sound ._

"You're sure that's the only door?" she asked quietly, trying not to panic.

"Hell, yes, I'm sure," he answered her, but he went to check it out anyway, going back into the kitchens, to check out as much of the place as he could access. No changes though, just two doors to the entire area; the entrance door he'd blocked, and the padlocked door he'd told her about. When he told her that, she buried her face in her hands and groaned. This couldn't be true, undead dogs and perv stalkers were bad enough, but for the whole place to just defy normal rules _completely_...

"Come on Kate, first this mystery coffee, and now some guy who can't have been here? What the hell are you talking about?" Crawley asked jokingly. The girl at the table snapped her head round angrily.

"Mystery coffee? Guy who wasn't here! What, you think I'm nuts? You think I _like_ a shopping mall complete with demon dogs and disappearing guys? The burger-flipper was bad enough, but the guy in the coat..."

"Woah! Stop there." He blanched, held up a hand to stop her "Guy in a coat? Like, some big black thing?"

She shut her eyes briefly, picturing the man in the coat. _A 'big black thing'? Pretty much, yeah._ "Yeah, that's the one, he was sat right here. That's his cigarette and his cup, and just as you came in he vanished."

"So...? What did he want, what did he say?"

She chewed her lip a little, thinking again, choosing what to say very carefully. She decided to tell him something, but not much, and told him that the dark man had been here to warn her about the town, that the school was very dangerous, and that he 'couldn't tell her' what was going on, why the town was so messed up.

"Well, Katie," he started, "that sounds a lot like the bastard who messed up my hand. I wouldn't trust anything he says. Oh yeah, that's right, I've met him too. Said something about the mother of the god or something like that and stomped on my hand when I fell over" He waved my swollen hand, which was now turning an ugly purple. "If he's gonna beat on guys that need help, I wonder what he'd say to a lost little girl to get her to trust him? You might wanna think about that, Katie"

She did not like that, only her very closest friends and relatives could be that familiar with her, and this guy had been pushing his luck since the start. Reaching into the knapsack, she pulled out the revolver and levelled it at him again.

"And you might wanna think about getting the hell outta here, Crawley. I don't know what the hell you're up to here, but I don't think I like it and I sure as hell don't trust you. I'm not dumb enough to give you your gun back, but I'm not that heartless that you don't get some help from me, so here.." She shifted her weight, and pulled the knife from her waistband, and threw it to him. She pulled a health drink from the backpack and threw one to him, "and the drink is a health drink" she added. "A drink for your health. Now get the hell outta here, and if you ever call me Katie again or get too close, I will shoot you. That's a promise"

She watched him leave, waited until she had heard his footsteps fade away, and then slumped back in her chair. This whole threatening people with guns thing was getting on her nerves, but if the man in black had been telling the truth, it was something she'd have to get used to. The devil dogs might just turn out to be the least of her problems, especially if Crawley got worse than he already was, and whatever else might change in this messed up version of her hometown, she seemed to be stuck with him. Until she figured out what was going on, anyway. The vanishing guy had said she should head home to see if she could find a clue or something about what was going on, and the more she thought about it, the more that made sense. But that meant going out among those creatures again, so she would need something more than just a revolver with a few bullets. Checking the revolver, she found that she only had one bullet left, and now that Crawley had the knife she had found the revolver was all she had left. That wouldn't be any good once she fired that last bullet. Maybe there was something useful in the kitchen...

A search of the kitchen revealed that Crawley had been telling the truth about the doors, and that Happy Burger allowed its employees to play with some pretty big knives and a really nasty looking meat cleaver. A paring knife lay next to the knife block, still bloody from whatever it had last been used for, but it was too short to be of any use against creatures like the thing that had chased her in here, so she left it, figuring that the only use she'd have for something like that in this place would be suicide or sandwich making. The first wasn't an option and the second wasn't useful. Picking out a long butcher's knife, she carefully sheathed it in her belt, and was about to leave the Happy Burger when she spotted a small red portable radio lying where the second, heavier, garbage bin Nathan had pushed in front of the door had been standing when she came in. It didn't work, though, no matter how much she pushed the buttons or shook the batteries. Or maybe there were just no transmissions here and now, which would fit with there being no people and no traffic. Figuring it could come in handy later, she turned the radio on (_got to make sure I don't miss any transmissions that might happen_, she thought to herself) and left the Happy Burger.

Bloody pawprints led from the mall entrance to the main foyer, both of which were shuttered off now, although they'd been accessible when she entered. Deciding that she didn't really want to meet a devil dog with only one bullet on her side anyway, Kate headed for a staff stairwell, grabbing a customer map and complementary pen on her way past the main welcome board. So pre-occupied was she that she didn't notice the new message on the board. The ad for the Lakeside Mall, which should have been a pink bunny going shopping (a mascot the mall shared with the amusement park, doing discounts and deals for each others staff and customers in a kind of joint business scheme) was gone. In its place, a scrawled red message: 'Welcome to the Last Gasp Mall! It's a business doing pleasure to you!'


	8. Retail Therapy

**A/N - I try not to write such excessively long chapters, God knows I do. But I just can't help myself, I just have to stick my hand down the crapper. Uh... I mean... keep typing... Uhm, yeah...enjoy!**

Reaching the second floor, Kate ignored the darkened employee hallways as best she could and headed out to the mall proper, a vast ring of stores surrounding an empty space between the stories. As before, though, things weren't as they should be. The safety railings on the side of the walkway had broken off, leaving nothing but occasional jagged stumps of metal jutting up from the tile floor like broken teeth. Edging carefully to the nearest rail, she squatted down, one hand on her knee, the other on the rim of the walkway, and leant over to see the floor below. The drop was way too far to fall without breaking something or even dying, she realised immediately, and nothing interesting was going on down there anyway, even the fountain was shut off. The storefronts were drab and dismal, both on the first floor and the second, and the place was caked with dirt and grime. Now leaning so far over she was almost kneeling on the edge, she took hold of the stub for support and peered across the plaza. One of the hallway shutters was open! And beyond that, an exit! Now all she had to do was get down there in one piece and she could go home and start making sense of all this. Tugging on the stub to bring herself back to the walkway, Kate overbalanced and fell to her side, the broken end of the hollow metal bar penetrating her jacket and scraping against her waist. She cried out at the sudden shock and pain, rolled away from the dangerous bar, and lay there holding her side.

"Owww...damn it..." she moaned "that...owch...I _really_ coulda done without. Damn metal spikes, no freaking good for my health, I'll bet I've gotten tetanus or some damn thing now..." A thought struck her and she sat up, wincing at the pain. Her injured side screaming fury at her, she wriggled round to get her backpack off and opened it to get at one of the..."_health drink_s!" she exclaimed happily. "A drink for my health, eh? Ok, mr dark and disappearing, let's see if I can believe ya. I wonder if this stuff really is good for me..." She opened the bottle and gingerly sniffed the top of the pale cream liquid. Vanilla and..honey? So far so good, but the coffee had looked and smelt ok, too. Until she drank it. She tilted the bottle to her mouth and let the very tip of her tongue dip, small and pink, into the odd-looking liquid. It tasted...just like vanilla and honey, and still looked the same on a second inspection, too. She squealed joyfully and hugged the little bottle.

"You're my new favourite thing, little drink. Yes you are! Hey...what the...?" An itching, tingling sensation flared up suddenly at her side, where the bar had ripped her pale skin. Opening her jacket, she twisted round to see the bloodstain on her light-blue t-shirt ('yowch, that was _too_ close to being real serious') and lifted the material to reveal the bare flesh beneath. An ugly gash ran right across her side, cut deep into the flesh. There was, however, no blood flowing, the gash seemed to have closed up enough to stop the bleeding. Bemused, Kate held the little bottle up to what light there was, and looked from it to the gash and then back. A niggling suspicion formed in her mind. "A drink for my health, huh? I wonder..." Bracing herself, the girl downed the rest of the bottle in a few gulps and cried out once again at the sudden tingling itch in her side. Moving slowly, almost afraid of what she expected to see, she turned and inspected her side again. Flawless, nothing but a faint scar left, still less the gaping wound that should have been there. Nothing but wet ruby blood marred her fine physique, and that, she decided, she could live with.

"After all," she reasoned to herself, rising from the ground and fastening her jacket again, "it's much easier to _live_ with a bloody t-shirt than to _die_ in a bloody mess" Giggling at the joke, she shrugged herself into the backpack again and turned to the nearest storefront door. None of them would have anything you'd usually expect to find, she was sure of that, but she couldn't shake the feeling that there would still be a good reason to check the doors. She might find something useful, maybe more of those cool little drinks, or perhaps a bigger gun.

"It'd be stupid to hope for a clean set of clothes," she muttered, "though it'd be nice to not have this thing sticking against me like this." The sign on the door read 'Fred's Fashions'. "I guess I'll find a mad dog in here or something," she added to her rambling train of thought, "Sure as hell won't find any nice skirts or stuff like that." Turning the handle, she went in. And stopped dead in her tracks at the sight that met her.

Clothes! Real, clean clothes that she could touch and feel and... and were real and nice and normal! First the drink and now this! Her heart soared at the sheer joy of it. She didn't love them because they were clothes, she told herself, though a bit of clothes shopping sometimes did make her feel that little bit better about herself (and that admission was a lot more grudging than an outsider could guess) but because, even surrounded by the dirt and general nastiness of the little store, they represented a world she could enjoy, a clean, whole world in which people used doors when they entered or left a room, where coffee didn't turn to sickly-sweet blood and pervert stalkers didn't follow her through wolf-infested forests with nasty ideas and the tools to make them real. Still, though... a nice thing was really incredibly out of character for this place, what horrible thing was she going to have to go through for it? Nathan's gun at the ready, she moved slowly across the shop floor to the clothes rack, heart thumping in anticipation. What if some _thing_ was hiding behind the rack? What then? With only one bullet, would she even be able to wound it? The floor creaked and groaned at each slow step, and the hanging fabrics seemed to shift ever so slightly in an absent breeze.

The walls seemed to press in at every step, the groans and creaks beneath her penetrated her ears and head, Kate couldn't take the suspense anymore. Yelling at the top of her lungs, she lunged at the rack, small fists flailing, and drove it against the wall. Nothing. Nothing but clothes. A gray-white pleated skirt, about an inch shy of knee-length, and a tough-looking shirt with extra short sleeves, of the same foggy-gray color. So she'd be cold, she decided, examining the garments, but clean, at least. Maybe there was even a faucet somewhere in the back office? She passed through an open doorway to a small, cramped office behind the main shop floor.

"Not even enough room to stand in here," she told herself, "and no faucet or anything useful, either." Added to which, the room's only furnishings, a large desk and office seat, spooked her somewhat. Though the setup was such that anyone at the desk would have to face toward the door if they were facing the desk, and there was no room to move furniture around, the seat was facing away from her, a high-backed construction of dark oak and burgundy leather. Anyone or anything could be slouched down in there, waiting for her to turn away so it could pounce. Backing away, not turning away once, she returned to the main shop, closing the office door tightly behind her. Aside from the clothes rack and sales counter ('No use for that now, I guess shopping hours ended sometime last century") there was no furnishing in the room, not even a dressing screen to get changed behind. Feeling horribly exposed to by the full-length storefront window, she bit her lip anxiously. Getting changed would be a _great_ idea, but what if Crawley showed up? That just wouldn't do, he'd be sure to... _be sure to do something nasty? _her mind finished off. _Yeah,_ she admitted, _something particularly nasty. And even if he isn't as bad as that, I still don't wanna risk it. _Just then, a scratching started at the store door, a low growling mixed with a snuffling.

"What the hell?" Kate blurted out. "Is... is there someone there? Hello?" _Oh hell, I didn't shut the door properly, did I? I was too happy about the clothes. Stupid! Stupid Kate! _The door creaked open, revealing... nobody?

"Huh?" Kate leant forward, peering at the empty space, "what...?" A movement on the floor, suddenly noticed, made her almost swallow her own tongue. "Ahh! Oh! Oh, it's you! How did you get in here?" The large black Dog from the forest looked up at her, took in the room, then turned and nuzzled the door shut. It clicked to and the Dog padded up to Kate's feet, staring solemnly up at her as only a dog can. She squatted down to pet it, the tough fabric of her skirt, made taught by the movement, almost knocking the animal to the ground in the process. "Oh! I keep sitting on you, I'm sorry!" She held the animal's massive head, feeling once again that living heat from its skin, looking into the jet black eyes that had kept her calm and maybe even saved her sanity in the woods beyond the world that she knew.

"I need to get changed," she told it, "but if that guy shows up... I dunno, can I risk it?" Somehow, she found, having someone to talk to, even if it was just an animal, helped a lot more than the little that talking to herself helped. The Dog, though, didn't seem to care about what she was saying, and laid its head on the taught denim of her skirt, as though wanting to sleep in her lap. Its weight, though, knocked her backwards off balance, and she fell sprawled to the ground, giggling helplessly.

"You know, doggy, I end up spending _way_ too much time on my back when you're around" she joked, swatting the animal's shoulders playfully. "If my dad could see me like this he'd..." she trailed off, not wanting to think of her dad right now. The last time she had seen him, charred and burnt from the flames of the car wreck, she'd felt so sick to her stomach from the fear and worry that she had only just made it to the bathroom in time before vomiting. The doctors, of course, had offered kind smiles and vague prognoses, but the hard, cold fact was that he had been horribly mangled in the crash and was unlikely to ever wake from the coma. Most likely, she knew, he'd die cold and alone in that dingy little room in Alchemilla hospital. She shook her head, blonde hair sparkling in the light, to shake the thoughts from her mind.

"Anyway, I'm glad you're alive... At least if that bastard Nathan comes in while I'm changing, I won't be quite alone." She rose, unfastened her jacket, and let it drop to the floor. The Dog snuffled at it, poked it, and, having decided it was inedible and not much fun, lay down on its side, lying its head down on the green padding, big dark eyes gazing up at her. She stripped off her bloodstained t-shirt and hung it on the clothes trolley. The Dog had obviously been well-trained by its previous owners, if somewhat prudishly, she noticed, as it covered its eyes with its paws on seeing her thus. She bent down to it to berate it softly.

"Now, how are you gonna look out for me if you've got your eyes closed, huh?" Gently, she lifted the furry paws off its eyes and grinned into the black orbs. "There, see? Nothing to worry about." She held her arms out to the side, gave a twirl, and struck a pose, grinning. "See? No claws, no tentacles, nothing. Ta-da!" The Dog, however, was staring at a point on her side, just above the waistband of her denim skirt. She followed its gaze and saw the patch of her own drying blood.

"Oh, that," she muttered, "yeah, my own damn fault, shoulda watched what I was doing, huh? It's all better, though, see? She knelt next to the animal, displaying the healed wound and the wet redness. The Dog, however, shrank back, whimpering softly.

"What? It's only blood, right? Here, look." She ran a fingertip along it and held the bloody finger to the Dog's nose. The Dog sniffed once, twice, and growled deep within itself, baring its teeth as though hungry. She withdrew her hand hurriedly. "Woah! When was the last time someone fed _you_?" The Dog blinked, shook its head rapidly, and withdrew further still, burying its nose in its paws. The contrite look it gave her made her laugh again. "Yeah, it's ok, relax, it's not like I'm scared you're gonna eat me alive or anything." She straightened up and sucked the blood off her fingertip. Ew, nasty. Still, the gunk had to come off somehow. She'd have to lick it off her hands as she had off her fingertip. An unappetising choice, but a necessary one. Sighing wearily, she began.

A few minutes later she was clean of the mess, though her tongue tingled unhappily with the sharp copper taste of her own blood. Feeling better about herself, she wriggled out of her skirt and let it drop to the floor around her ankles. That was when the shrieks began. At first it was a single voice, coming from a great distance. A woman's voice in terrible fury and violence, which was rapidly joined with others, also female. The volume increased with each new voice, and soon it seemed as though the entire building was filled with the sound of those ghastly furies. Suddenly a man's voice rang out against them, short, sharp, and terrified, and cut off in mid-scream. The lights above Kate's head flickered and dust fell from the ceiling.

Standing half naked in the store, clad only in her short white underclothes, the girl felt exposed and vulnerable once again, more so than ever before. The Dog rose from its impromptu bedding and sniffed the air once, twice, and deepest of all on the third inhalation. After which, it sat back down, watching Kate expectantly. Whatever had just happened didn't seem to have bothered it at all, though Kate stood there gaping and hugging herself in fear. What the hell? She noticed that the Dog didn't seem at all fazed, and sat down right in front of it. She lunged forward, hugging it with her arms and legs and rocking it ever so slightly, as though it were the most unlikely teddy bear in the world. It rested its head on her shoulder and let itself be petted, snaffling gently at her long hair as the fine threads poked up its snout.

Just as their encounter in the woods, the beast's heat and presence comforted her. Another living being to hold on to, one that didn't want to rip her to pieces in some way or, she shuddered, another. She kissed the dog's head and rose to dress in her new outfit. Turning to leave once she had dressed, she noticed two boxes of revolver bullets laying on the counter and swiped them on the way past, paying no attention to the small notepad near them. The door swung shut behind them and, Kate froze in the middle of reloading the gun. The whole mall had darkened considerably, the tile floor had turned to metal plates, and a dark bubbling sound filtered up from the floor below. By the remaining light she headed for the service hallway to investigate the shriek from before. The Dog however, strayed to the edge of the walkway, peering down. Joining it, Kate heard a soft weeping from the floor below, and saw a young woman, not much older than herself, walking barefoot across the plaza, crying softly.

"Hey! Hey down there!" The woman stopped at Kate's yells and peered up towards her "You ok down there? What's wrong?" The other girl, however, was too choked with sobs to answer and, turning her back on the two, walked on, her light polo neck and lilac pants lighting her up against the grime and darkness like a beacon.

"Wait! Stop! It's not safe here by yourself!" Kate yelled after her. But the girl faded into the darkness without so much as a backwards glance. Kate cursed softly to herself, the other girl was almost certain to get herself killed, she obviously wasn't gonna be careful of the monsters or anything like that. She had to get down to the first floor, someone had to help the poor girl.

"But to get down there I need to find a way down that won't kill me, and to do that I need to be able to see properly, so I need a flashlight or something" she glanced down to the darkened plaza "Yeah, definitely a flashlight. There's no way in _hell_ I'm going down there in the dark. So...check the offices? The mall must have security guards, and they would definitely have flashlights. Come on, boy! We're heading to the office! Boy? Doggie?" the Dog was gone, and there was no sight or sound of him. Kate sighed in anger and exasperation, just when she had been getting a grip on things, too. Still, at least she had a plan now, and someone else to worry about other than herself. She headed back to the service hallway.

**A/N - It occurs to me that not everyone may have read Gaia Faye's excellent one-shot 'Urges' and therefore may not know what the hell my A/N up there is all about. Go read it. If you still don't get it, go play Silent Hill 2 and begin the completion of your life. Oh yeah, and please review this little offering. Thanks. :-)**


	9. Insecure

**A/N - Sorry it took so long to update, hope it was worth the wait.**

Finding the security office took some time by the dim light, and once or twice she found herself in an old storeroom or a janitor's closet. Though the storerooms might have held something useful to the stores once, now they held little but broken cardboard boxes, empty husks of their former selves, and rotting wooden crates. One or two storerooms, though, held a box of revolver bullets, a health drink, and Kate even, to her surprise and delight, found a few first aid kits.

"Could come in useful if I run outta "heth drks" and stick myself on something again" she muttered. Stuffing the last kit into her backpack, she left the storeroom. The next door she tried, though, had nothing so pleasant behind it. She had found the security office, and what looked like a former security guard seated at a desk with his back to her. He had to be a former guard, no one would employ a guard whose head hung down loose over his back, attached only by a few strands of bone and gristle. The guard's face was riddled with maggots, and seemed to writhe and wriggle in the darkness. The window on the other side of the room was broken in a corner, a jagged hole suggesting something large had been thrown through it. No glass on the floor, though, so it must have been thrown out rather than in. The floor, a cold rusted red, was hard underfoot, and a pool of blood was forming under the guard's seat, dripping down from his wrists, his legs, his severed head.

Grimacing, Kate screwed up her courage to turn her back on the rotting corpse, and turned to the broken locker on her right, best to just get stuff and get gone. Digging around found her a flashlight and a few boxes of handgun bullets, which she also grabbed, just in case she found a handgun. Clipping the flashlight to a breast pocket of her new shirt, she switched it on, straightened up and braced herself for what she might see when she turned back to the corpse.

The body hadn't moved at all, and Kate's pent up breath escaped in a long, relieved sigh. Stepping closer, she examined the body. A massive gash across the throat had split the neck to the spinal cord, and then it must just have been gravity that toppled the skull back. The monitor on the desk, she noticed, was as dead as its owner, and was cracked and blackened as though it had recently been set alight. There was nothing good in this room, she decided, and left in a hurry, heading back for the main shopping plaza. Now that she was prepared for the darkness below, she could head down to the first floor and try to find the other girl. As terrified as she was herself of the place, the other girl's predicament occupied her mind much more. Barefoot and wracked with misery, the girl in the light sweater would be an easy meal for any monsters below, and Kate hurried to the service hallway marked on the map, on the opposite side of the plaza to the one she had just left. As she entered the hallway, the radio in her pocket began to crackle and hiss. Pulling it out, puzzled, she shook the thing next to her ear. Maybe a transmission problem? She twiddled the buttons in all the directions she could think of, but nothing made a difference. Not daring to turn it off in case a broadcast came through, she shoved the thing back in her pocket and tried to ignore the mounting volume. All the doors ahead of her looked the same, bleak, bare, and useless. Some had been locked, she realised as she tried the handles, and some... a quick twist to confirm... seemed to have completely broken locks. No entry there.

As she continued down the hallway, trying each door in turn, the radio static became increasingly hard to ignore and she stopped, wondering if it might not be better to turn the damn thing off after all. Having stopped to think, she became aware of another noise that she'd not heard before over the sound of her own progress down the hallway. Heavy shambling footsteps coming up behind her, getting closer as the radio grew louder. Gun in hand, Kate stepped forward and turned around to face the source. A security guard? The light from her flashlight showed an old guard, limping forward, face so wrinkled as to be unrecognisable at this distance. She relaxed and waited, maybe this old guy could help her, even if he did seem to be having some trouble keeping his head from twitching every now and again.

The guard drew closer, and Kate smiled, opened her mouth to greet him, and let loose a terrified scream. The guard was no guard, and certainly not the benevolent old man she had been hoping would help her. The...thing shuffling toward her had no face, a baton in each hand, and some sort of terrible deformities keeping it from even standing straight. Kate backed away, revolver raised.

"Stay back!" she warned "Just...just get the hell away from me!" The monster advanced on her, and she fired a shot into its head, which twitched and began oozing, but didn't slow it down. Two more shots rang out from the gun, into the center of its body, and it shuddered, and fell. Kate lowered the weapon and began to breathe again. What the hell was going on? She advanced on the prone figure on the floor and squatted in front of it, examining the head. No marks of any kind around the neck, nor any maggots. This was definitely not the guard from the office, undead or otherwise. Balancing herself carefully, she leant over to examine one of the batons in the guard monster's hands. A standard nightstick, of the sort you'd find in any rent-a-cop's arsenal, but with a nasty difference. Three sets of three nails, each standing sharp about six inches out from the wood, projected from one side of the baton.

"What the...?" she leant in closer, trying not to touch the body while getting a good look at the weapon. The nails hadn't been nailed in one side and projected out the other, but the baton was a single piece of wood, so they appeared to have simply grown out of it. Suddenly she was knocked over, off balance, onto her back, limbs asprawl, as the monster reared up again, its waxy skin splitting open into a gaping mouth, screeching insanely at her. It pulled itself across the ground, hauling its broken body onto her boots, the rotting uniform scraping up her calves, its fetid breath hot on her waist, tongue lolling and drooling over her legs and skirt, its teeth shone sharp and cruel in the glare of her flashlight.

This time Kate didn't stop to think, and emptied the remaining three bullets into the thing's twitching head. This time they made a difference, and the thing slumped down onto her, still moaning and twitching grotesquely. Kate wriggled out from under it, scrabbled to her feet and stomped down on the bloody head, the crunch and squelch of broken bone underfoot sickening her, yet the anger and fear burning within would not let her stop.

"Die you bastard! Die! Die! Die!" she yelled at the top of her voice, the thing's twitching becoming weaker and eventually stopping. The skull had disintegrated into a pile of bloody mulch, and the thing was obviously as dead as it would get, and she stepped back and away, legs shaking, her voice breaking into tears.

"Die... just die, damn... damn you..." she sobbed. "Just die. Leave me alone." She slumped against the wall, slid down to her feet, hugging her legs, and sniffled into her knees.

"I want to go home" she muttered quietly "I don't care what's going on here anymore, I just wanna find that girl, get outta this hell mall, and get both of us the hell away from here. I wonder what's happened to Crawley...?" She turned to glare at the dead monster, daring it to come alive again. No movement, no sound. No sound at all, in fact, the radio had gone dead when the monster had stopped moving. She gasped at the revelation, so _that_ was it! Now it made sense. Or, at least, as much sense as anything else in this place made. Resolving never to turn the thing off, she pulled herself to her feet and consulted the map for the stairwell. Since she'd been marking locked and broken doors off on the map as she went along, she had a fairly good idea of her own position on it, and finding the stairwell was much faster now that she no longer wanted to check out all the other doors.

Opening the door to the first floor, Kate stepped out into the cold drafts of the wide open space, the passageways and central plaza creating a wind that chilled her through and through. Shivering, she bent her head to the map, its dense waxy card blocking any of the light from her lamp from escaping. Which was why, when the girl in the light sweater hurtled down the passageway, she had no way of seeing Kate until it was far too late, and hit her head on.

The pain of the collision was really more a shock than anything else, and Kate caught the door handle just in time to keep herself from falling to the ground. The other girl shrieked in the lamplight and cowered.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she gibbered, "please don't tell Daddy, oh don't tell him he'll be so mad if I've been bad and he's bad when he's mad and I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Please don't tell, don't tell, don't tell him, please!"

Stuffing the map back into her pocket, Kate raised a hand to calm the girl.

"Hey, relax. Breathe. It's gonna be ok." She advanced slowly, hands open, voice steady "It's ok, relax. You're safe now. Look around, it's just us." The girl flinched as Kate rested a hand on her shoulder. "Easy..." continued Kate, "just take it... nice and easy... it'll be ok..." _And if you can believe that in a place like this_, she added mentally, _you can believe just about anything. But I guess ya gotta have some hope. _"There," she carried on, as the other girl's shudders became less violent, "there, see. It's ok, you'll be alright. Now what happened? What're you running from?" The girl in the folded-neck sweatshirt grimaced at a memory.

"I... I'm running from... I'm running from a bad man..." she stuttered "he hurt my friend. It was loud. Then he... he wanted to hug me, and my friend told me he didn't wanna hug me. That he was just... just after that one thing." She lifted her eyes to Kate's, frightened and helpless. "You know what I mean, right?" she added, dropping to a whisper, "that... that one thing that they all want. You know what I mean. Right?"

On any other day, with any other person, Kate, one nature's fluffier minds, would have danced around the topic. She would have wanted the person to tell her exactly what she was talking about, rather than run her mind down such sordid avenues. On any other day, Kate might not even have been sympathetic so much as freaked out just by the thought of it. The look in the other girl's eyes, though, told her two things: that wasn't an option here (had it ever been?) and she didn't have to ask what 'that one thing' was. Those wide, panicked eyes told her everything she needed to know, and a good deal more than she would have liked to. The shivering wreck in front of her had been through a hell that she couldn't even begin to imagine, and was now stuck here of all places. Her own heart almost broke in sympathy with the other's shattered eyes.

"Yeah," she whispered "I know what you mean. I know." As she spoke, the drafts picked up, she heard a door swinging in the wind, and remembered her escape plan.

"Come on," she told the girl, "let's get out of here. There's nothing good here, and it's not safe. Especially with you with no shoes. You haven't hurt yourself like that?" The girl shook her head dumbly, and lifted a foot to show a bloodstained sole. No injuries, though, Kate figured she must have walked over a puddle of blood left by a devil dog, and resolved to get the girl something better as soon as they left the mall. She nudged the other girl, and started walking in the direction of the center of the plaza, hoping fervently that the girl would follow. She wasn't disappointed, the other caught up to her in a hurried patter of bare feet and a cool frail hand slipped into her own. She grinned at the girl, relief flooding her body.

"Let's get out of here, huh?" Still wide-eyed and silent, the girl nodded obediently. Matching pace, the two girls walked hand in hand towards the plaza, and the escape beyond.

**R&R please? It's the only reason I keep writing. **


	10. Like a Bad Penny

**A/N - This many updates in the same day? You can tell I'm having a slow work day, can't you?**

Hand in hand, the two girls made their way along the hallway, Kate sneaking glances at the other girl as often as she could, not wanting to be caught staring. Who was this terrified little creature who, though obviously her senior, was so much like a little girl that, even at sixteen, Kate felt older than her? How had she ended up here? Come to that, what was the other girl's _name_? The questions occupied her mind, and she didn't notice their progress, past an abandoned pizza parlor, a shoe store, a locksmith's booth. As they came towards the end of the hallway, approaching the plaza, she decided to try talking to the other girl, maybe find some answers.

"So...hi..." she started, "I'm Kate. It's nice to meet you. What's your name?" The girl didn't answer, was too per-occupied with thoughts of her own. Kate stopped and waved a hand in front of the other girl's face.

"Hey, you ok in there?" The girl blinked and looked around, taking in the scene. Kate heard the bubbling of a fountain, and realised they'd come into the plaza. _Good_, she thought, _we're that much closer to getting outta this screwy place_. Across the plaza she could see monster corpses on the ground. Devil dogs, one without a head, and security guard monsters. _Glad we didn't run into those guys while they were still up and at it_, her inner commentator remarked, _that coulda been messy_.

"This is where I found him again," the other girl stated. "No, that's not right. This is where he found me, and they" gesturing at the monsters, "had been following me. He got in the way, though, so they tried to kill him. We went down... down there to talk" She turned and pointed back the way they came, Kate could just make out the abandoned pizza parlor they'd passed.

"The pizza place?"

The other girl nodded, yes.

"But then the bad man found us. He hurt my friend, and... and then I ran." She looked confused and hurt, as though the world were falling apart and she knew she'd be blamed for it. And punished, and punished, and punished for it.

"It's ok, though," Kate smiled at the girl, trying to reassure her, "the bad man's gone, right? And I can look after you now." The girl smiled sadly.

"I've heard that one before, they never could look after me. Most of them never even wanted to. They just made it worse. And you have a gun, too. Just like the bad man."

"He had a gun, too?" Kate started walking again, thinking aloud, "so he wasn't one of..." she pointed at the corpses, "one of them?"

"No, he was a proper person. He had a face and hands and a gun, they'd eat him too if he doesn't shoot them. Proper people here need to keep something sharp or loud with them, or they die."

"You sound like you've been here a long time."

"I came here a long time ago. I was looking for... I was looking for someone important. I thought maybe she could help me. Even if she couldn't help me stop the things that were happening, maybe she could help me understand things. I didn't find her, though. I tried to... I tried to end it all..." Now she just looked tired. Kate couldn't remember ever having seen anyone look so tired of everything.

"He wouldn't let me, though. I went up the stairs to try to find a way to end it, left _him_ behind, too. He took my knife, wanted it for himself, so I had to find another. But he wouldn't let me. He took me to Brookhaven, gave me a room there. He said it's safe, and they never come for me, but I can see them when I look down the hallway. They haven't come yet, but I think... I think one day they will. She always said I deserved it, that I was a dirty whore who shoulda stopped it, but I didn't, so I musta wanted it. She wouldn't lie, would she? So... I musta deserved it. So they'll come, even if my friend says they can't, even if they haven't yet. They will."

Kate's heart went cold. To just give up, to have no hope at all, was something she couldn't begin to understand, something she had never even thought possible. But here was this pretty girl, who should have been happy and laughing, standing with her in the dingy mall telling her that someone would come to... to rape her? And that she _deserved_ it? Struck dumb, she could only pat the girl's shoulder in what she hoped would be a comforting way. The girl flinched, and no wonder, but allowed Kate to pat her. _Having to put up with people touching you_, Kate thought numbly, _having to fear that everyone was only out to fuck you and do God knows what to you. No wonder she has to make herself tolerate just being patted. I guess she's had practice, though. Poor kid_. The thought brought tears to her eyes, and she blinked them away to hide them from the other girl.

"Come on, let's get outta here, then we can find your friend. How's that sound?"

"But he's back there. And he's hurt"

"Then we'll go out and find a way to fix him. We just have to get out right now, sweetie, ok?"

The other girl nodded submissively "Ok mama." She blinked and gasped, realising what she'd said, and backed away in horror. "I'm sorry, I mean ok Kate. You're Kate, right? Right. I'm sorry, I... I get confused sometimes..."

"It's ok, it's ok. Relax." Kate took a deep breath and took the girl's hand, gently. "This place isn't good for anyone, let's get outta here, ok? That hallway looks good to go out of, let's head that way."

They advanced further into the plaza, towards the fountain lit up by the few lights that still worked, and the girl stopped dead at the sight of the figure they revealed. Nathan Crawley.

"Nathan..." Kate breathed.

"The bad man" whispered the girl, holding tight to Kate's hand. Kate's stomach churned within her. So Nathan had become a killer since she had last seen him. She was certain that the guy the other girl referred to as 'my friend' was dead by now, guns were too damn dangerous to expect surviving without good medical care, and that would have to have been done quickly. She had to make sure the girl didn't guess at her friend's death, though, she was obviously fragile enough as it was. _So now _ _Crawley_ the commentator in her muttered _now there's a thing._

Stepping forward, Kate spoke to the murderer.

"So you're still here. Having fun? You scared her," a gesture to the other girl, "half to death, you know."

He nodded silently. Said nothing. The empty mall stretched away around them.

"We're getting the hell out of here." she continued. "I guess you'll want to do the same, but stay away from us, ok?" Kate pulled the revolver out from the waistband of her skirt and gestured at Crawley, glaring furiously at him. He pulled out a handgun of his own and made the same motion at her.

"Ok, you wanna play cowboys, kid? We can do that. Except this time I'm armed, too. You aint got the advantage over me no more. I've already used this once, your new friend can tell ya how I took out the guy holding her prisoner" He waved the gun at the other girl, who yelped and hid behind Kate. Kate was suddenly very confused. Prisoner? But the girl had spoken of the guy as a friend.. Maybe the room in Brookhaven? _Does it matter? He's got a gun pointed at you, idiot! Deal with that first!_ ranted her commentator.

Dismissing the thought she rolled her eyes at the man. Apparently he hadn't learnt anything useful from being stuck in here. Not even to get over himself in the attempt to get the hell out.

"Look. Dick. We just wanna get outta here, ok? Now, I dunno what it is you're wanting, but I'm tired and wanna go home. I'm tired of devil dogs that try to eat you alive, I'm tired of insane burger boys who vanish into thin air, I'm tired of security guards who turn out to be monsters, and, dick, most of all I'm tired of you. Take your ego and shove it, cause I'm done worrying about you."

With that, she turned her back on him and started toward the exit hallway, her long loose hair flying out behind her on the incoming draft. He ran to catch up to her, and was halfway to her when something slid out from under his foot, making him fall heavily to the metal ground. At his sudden yell of pain and shock Kate spun round, revolver raised, to see what had happened to him or what had attacked him.

"Nathan! You ok?" She hurried over to him, the other girl stayed back. She had yelled at his yell and now stood there with her hand over her mouth, wide-eyed in shock.

"Yeah, kid, thanks. I'm ok," he grumbled, embarrassed. "I guess I just slipped up on..." he felt underneath himself. "On a newspaper? What the..?"

Kate reached down, took his hand and helped him up, then crouched down next to him to read the paper. A big photo of a spotty student took up most of the front page, with the headline "LOCAL STUDENT MISSING, SUICIDE SUSPECTED" underneath. Kate took a sharp breath, shocked, and stood up, holding the paper for the man to see.

"Nathan, look! This is the burger boy! He's the one that I saw!" Nathan scanned the headline, pointed at the date, five years ago, and raised his eyebrows inquisitively. Kate went white, her heart beginning to pound, panic beginning to set in.

"So he's been stuck here? All this time? But he hasn't aged at all! Even the grease and burger blood on his clothes were fresh!" If the burger boy had been here for five years since disappearing, would they themselves ever get out?

"Local student Jeff Brookman vanished without a trace during his shift in the newly-opened Lakeside Mall here in Silent Hill," Kate read aloud, "Co-workers said that he had been looking very depressed on entering the kitchens and had been lethargic, bitter and despairing throughout his first hour, prompting his shift manager to banish him to the back of the kitchens, out of sight of the customers.'I told him we couldn't look ourselves in the mirror if we at Happy Burger were making our customers unhappy just by the sight of us,' Pam Estel, graveyard shift manager, told the Silent Hill Gazette, continuing 'I told him that I knew this isn't the best of jobs, especially for a bright young man like him, but that he had to smarten up. That's when he told me he'd flunked all his SATs. Girl trouble, he said. He was real cut up about it. After that, it was more a mutual agreement that he'd stay in the back for the rest of the night. He agreed that it might help him decide what to do from here on out. I hope he's ok, though, he was real cut up about it.' Ms Estel has since quit the Happy Burger chain in search of a more productive and humane employer, an anonymous source told the Silent Hill Gazette."

Kate looked up from the paper and into the man's eyes, almost pleading with him to tell her it couldn't be true. That was all she could read. Somehow the words, perfectly legible when she saw them from the corner of her eye, just formed into blocks of black or ran away in all sorts of different directions when she looked straight at them.

"There's more about his mom and his brothers, but it's not readable," she said, "It's as if the words just don't want to be read." Nathan craned over her shoulder to try to read what the hell she was talking about, and had to admit he 'couldn't read jack squat' himself.

"He seemed real cut up about it..." he muttered. Kate gagged, trying to ignore the growing stench from the fountain behind them. "Real cut up...Hey kid, pipe down, wouldjah?" This last was to the girl in the light top, who was beginning to whimper again, but getting louder and more hysterical as she went on. The girl's whimpering, though, merely got louder, and Nathan turned to yell at her, but found the words dried up in his throat. Kate turned to see the other girl, standing like a statue, pointing at the fountain, gibbering. Kate turned to see the sight for herself, and her jaw dropped. The fountain was gushing with thick, hot blood, and a human figure was rising up from under the surface, the entrails floating in the blood getting caught on it, dangling from his shoulders.

Nathan grabbed Kate's shoulder, but to no avail. As if through a thick fog, Kate heard the other girl shriek and flee, bare feet flapping, heard the door slam shut, but couldn't tear her eyes away from the figure in the fountain. Jeff, the disappearing geek, the guy who had maddened her with his 'schoolgirl' taunts, stood bleeding and bloody in the pool before them. He held his slit, gushing wrists out to them plaintively, his Happy Burger uniform soaked in blood. He spoke, and more blood fell from his mouth, slopping over the claws that should have been fingers. He spoke, and Kate saw the gashes across his legs where he had been too slow for some low-lying demon with knives or claws. He spoke, and a nailed nightstick that Kate remembered so well fell from his battered chest. He spoke, and the walls closed in, trapping the two of them in with him.

He spoke, and the world ended with every word.

"I'm **very** cut up about it"

** A/N - I live for R&R. :-D**


	11. Disgruntled Employee

**A/N - I love you too, Gaia. :-) I've enabled anonymous reviews, so no-one's restricted to just one review per chapter anymore. Here come da boss!**

Eyes wide, Nathan backed off from the pool hurriedly, gun raised.

"Who... what the hell are you?" he sputtered.

"You need to pay more attention to the headlines, Mr Crawley" sneered the bloody figure. "Or maybe just to your students!"

Nathan gasped and fell to his knees. Kate's brow wrinkled in bemusement. His students? What? The wreck that had once been Jeff strode out of the pool towards Nathan, hot stinking blood slopping over the ground as he walked.

"That's right, you remember me now, right? I'm the kid you flunked when all I needed to stay in school was a good mark from you. I was a good student! I cared about my grades! And you shot that all to hell!" the monster roared. Kate raised her gun as Jeff's claws raised, ready to strike Nathan.

"Leave him alone! Even if he did flunk you, he didn't do this to you!"

"Leave him alone? When he's been so alone all this time? No, I want him to feel what I feel. What I've felt every stinking day since I came to this place. It's all his fault, and you don't know anything about this, little pretty and popular schoolgirl! I tried to fight it, tried to make it out alive. You can see for yourself how they got me when I was too slow, or ran out of ammo." it pointed at Jeff's scarred and gouged throat, the body it was inhabiting. Or maybe Jeff himself?

"I made it pretty far. But each time I thought I was gonna make it, another bastard came up on me. Even that bastard in the coat wouldn't help me. Yeah, he said he couldn't, that he was stuck here just like me, but I know he coulda helped me if he'd wanted to. He just didn't care. So I came back here. Picked up the knife. Ended my misery."

From the ground, Nathan laughed bitterly.

"Yeah, you look so much happier now."

"Shut up, bastard!" the thing spun and kicked Crawley in the gut, knocking him over. "I should have died. I should be in paradise. Didn't matter to me if it was the one the outside churches talked about or the one the Order was always yelling about, just so long as it wasn't this. Everything went dark and cold, all my blood ran out, and then I woke up here again. Still bleeding, still in pain. I'm still food for those damn things, and I'm more miserable than ever." Wrists still gushing blood, it turned to the prone figure on the floor. Its head twitched frantically, claws lengthened, and suddenly it was grown to monstrous height, twice Nathan's size it towered over them both, teeth sharp and ready, claws lubricated with its own blood.

"But you know what they say," it growled, "misery loves company. You'll stay here with me forever."

_Oh God! He's lost his mind, he's gonna kill us, we'll be here forever!_

Kate shook her head, trying to dislodge the thought. Black shadows raced across the ground, the fountain pool bubbled violently, releasing more stink. The state of her mind was a mess, she could barely think straight.

_It's gonna... he... we... There's no way out... Kid, where's the kid gone? Mommy? Daddy? Somebody help us... There's no help. It... we... here forever. Nothing else. Dogs, monsters, blood. Dead, we're all dead. We deserve to die... The dogs will kill us. The dogs..._

She sank to the floor, long legs curled under her, and slumped forward.

_The dogs, the gods, the God, The Dog._

The black shadows on the ground swirled in her vision, a bleak maelstrom of despair.

_Everything spins, flows, we're gonna die here, float up to nothing in the mist. Nothing solid here, just fog and nightmares. Nothing real._

The shadows stopped in place, suddenly fixed to the spot. One in the center twitched and writhed. A dog form. The shadows fled from it, insubstantial fears running from a real terror. Kate's mind cleared slightly.

_My mind. He's in my mind!_

"Nathan!" she yelled across the plaza to the writhing teacher, clutching his own head in agony. "Nathan it's in our heads! It wants us to give up!"

_We can't win, he'll take us to pieces.. he'll... I'll... shutup shutup shutup, get out of my head!_

Not daring to think, Kate pushed herself up to kneeling, and fell back to leaning across her boots. She raised the gun up and tried to aim over the buzz of noise in her mind.

_I can't hit it, there's no way, there's no ammo. It's already dead._

She pulled the trigger, and the thing shrieked in pain and agony, clutching at its throat. The alien thoughts in her mind vanished suddenly, and Kate pulled the trigger again, but no effect. Clear-headed now, she saw that the first hit had gone to the wound on the thing's throat, while the second had bounced off its Happy Burger pyramid-shaped cap.

"Nathan! Get up, or we'll both die!" The man groaned, rolled to his side, and fired at the thing, the gun seeming to weigh his arm down. The bullet hit home in the thing's injured chest and it screamed again. Rolling again, Nathan rose up off the ground, narrowly avoiding a swipe from the thing's claws.

"You can't kill me!" it shrieked, "I'm already dead! You'll never leave here! It's hopeless, give up!" The tip of a claw struck Nathan on a second strike and knocked him against the fountain. Propping himself up on the pool, he felt hot clammy hands grab onto him and screamed. A child's hand, with a small pink wristwatch on it, had latched on to his wrist. A female corpse, dark-haired and voluptuous, rose topless from the blood and embraced him, hungry lips latching onto his ear in a kiss that became a bite. He shrieked and lashed out, freeing himself by massive effort. The child's hand fell back, but the woman writhed obscenely, one arm beckoning him come hither, the other hand busying itself between her legs. Nathan gibbered and shook, helpless as the Jeff creature advanced on him, laughing.

"I think she likes you, Mr Crawley. Say, have you tried it wet yet?" Another shriek as Kate shot it in the leg, hot lead in an old oozing knife wound. The sound brought Crawley out of his own terror, and he fired at the woman's heart. She shrieked his name and fell back into the pool, disappearing beneath the surface.

The monster shambled towards Kate, leering at her. Three shots from the revolver, two went wild, and one bounced off its shoulder. Panicked, she kept squeezing the trigger, not registering the dry clicks from the empty chambers. It was almost upon her, the hot stink rolling off its skin broke on her own like a dead wave. Unclean, undead, the monster licked its lips and brought the weeping wrists down towards her, to hold her close, to make her his.

"You bastard!" Crawley roared. "Let us alone!" A shot into the creature's heart, another shriek. A shot into its throat. Kate blinked, fumbled in her pockets, and reloaded. The monster turned to face both of them, and standing with their backs to the pool, they faced their common enemy together.

"You can fuck with our minds all you like, but you bleed just like us" she stated flatly, raising her gun. A shot into its eye and it stumbled back, screeching.

Nathan raised his own gun "I'm getting the fuck outta here, Brookman, and you're not gonna stop me." She fired, and at that moment Nathan fired his own weapon, a strange synchronicity of sound as the shots rang out flat through the blocked-in plaza.

The simultaneous shots tore into the thing's throat, and an agonised swipe of its claws ran across Kate's jacket, ripping the padding and destroying it completely. She gasped and grimaced at the line of fire that sprung up where it ripped her skin, but stood her ground. Nathan's second shot hit the thing's shoulder, and bounced off harmlessly.

The monster was blinded and swaying now. One last shot. Nathan's gun and Kate's trained on the most wounded part of the thing, the throat. The two exchanged glances. Neither trusted the other, neither liked the other, but their immediate threat overcame that, at least for the moment.

"Now" said Nathan "Kill the bastard"

"Go for the throat" Kate commanded.

A fusillade of bullets as the two emptied their guns into the thing's throat.The hot lead tore away the flesh on the throat and broke through the back of the thing's neck, tearing the head off its shoulders. The creature fell forward to its knees, forcing the two to scramble out of the way. From its knees, it slumped into the fountain with a crash, its massive shoulders breaking the marble edifice. The head fell behind its feet, the broken fountain spurted up in to the air, a great mess of...

Water?

The two turned slowly. The mall was restored. Just as it had been when they entered it. Almost completely normal, though still abandoned. The fountain sparkled clear water into the air from a complete spout, and the only sign of blood was a trail of footprints leading out of the exit hallway. A small doll lay on the seating ring around the fountain pool. The two approached it silently, guns at the ready, hearts still pounding. The doll was more akin to an action figure, a six inch male in white and red uniform.

"Don't touch it!" Nathan hissed as Kate leant in closer. She nodded, extended the nozzle of the revolver, and turned the figure over with that. Jeff's hopeless face stared up at the roof, the fountain mist making his glazed, open eyes appear to weep. As they watched, the eyes sank into the waxen skin, the hands turned to claws, and the neck split slowly in two, releasing the head, which rolled into the pool. For a split second, the water turned red, and then cleared again. The doll had crumbled into dust, and the head, rather than floating to the surface, dissolved and spread into the pool.

"Poor bastard" muttered Nathan. "I knew he needed help with his grades, and the other teachers said he needed something more, but this..." He shrugged helplessly. "What could I have done? I was... I didn't..."

He stepped back, took a deep breath.

"Fuck it, I don't have to explain myself. This place is wrong, I'm getting the fuck outta here. You coming, kid?" Without waiting for a response, he ran to the door, along the hallway, and out of the mall, back into the fog. Kate stood alone, watching the figure that had hid from his passing emerge slowly from behind a billboard and begin to approach her.


	12. First Aid 101

**A/N - HUGE thanks to Gaia Faye, without whom this chapter would never have made it out.**

Walk - 12

"Is it safe now?" the girl in the light top asked Kate.

Kate grinned nervously, trying for a reassuring smile and failing. "I think so. As safe as it's probably gonna get, anyway."

"Good. We need to find my friend. He's hurt pretty bad."

_He's probably dead by now, but I guess we have to check. Maybe we can still help him. Maybe. _"Ok, we'll go look. Where did Nathan... I mean, the bad man, hurt him?"

"Here, and here." The other girl tapped herself twice on the left shoulder, and twice on the left breast. "He's probably not dead," she went on. "They got to him a few times before, but he found some first aid stuff and patched himself back up. But.." she paused, "something's changing. It hurts him more now when he gets hurt, and takes him longer to get fixed up. Like he's getting weaker or something. We've got to find him."

"Ok, we'll go look for him, but I wanna get you some shoes or something, ok? You're gonna get hurt like that."

A quick visit to the shoe store found a pair of pink socks and purple sneakers in the girl's size, and they arrived at the pizza parlor not long after leaving the plaza, shod and scared. What if he had died and turned into something like Jeff had? Or what if he had lived and was even worse that way? The cup of steaming blood flashed up again in Kate's mind. 'The coffee here', he had said. Her stomach churned at the memory of the vile liquid.

Stepping inside, they saw the place deserted. Only dust and spiders remained. Behind the cash counter lay a dead devil dog, its constant bleeding at last stopped by its final demise. Kate prodded it with a boot, keeping the revolver trained on it just in case. When the guts spilled out from a gash at the prod of her boot, she took it as a sign that it wouldn't get up again. The other girl gagged at the sight and turned away quickly, covering her eyes and mouth. Kate's own revulsion was barely kept down, and that by a great effort.

"Where was he when he was shot?" she asked.

"Just..." The girl turned and stepped forward, back into the dining area. "Just here. Then he shot him again, and he stepped back..." She stepped back, bumping into the counter. "…and he slid down here. He told me to run away, and I did, and I left him with the bad man and now he's probably dead because of me!" Leaning on the counter, she began to weep softly.

Kate advanced, and embraced the sniffling girl. "He'll be ok, I'm sure. Just relax, it'll be ok. Where would he go if he was hurt? The hospital? Alchemilla? Or... Brookhaven?"

Releasing herself, the other girl looked at Kate in astonishment, mouth an open 'o' of horror. She took a breath to speak, only to be interrupted by a crash from door behind the cash counter. A muffled yell followed, and another crash. Startled, the two girls jumped, and Kate spun and aimed the revolver at the door. Silence followed.

Then a low, despairing groan.

"He's hurt! Something's got him and it's killing him! Kate, you have to stop it!" Angela cried.

"I really, really wish you hadn't said that," muttered Kate.

Moving silently, the two girls gently pushed the kitchen door open and stepped in, their shoes sticking on the tiled floor. Looking down, Kate saw a symbol drawn in blood. A hexagon, with a circular node on each corner, containing two stars of David, one within the other. The symbol made her eyes hurt and her heart worry. She turned away from it quickly, following the blood drops trailing away from it. Advancing into the kitchen, gun at the ready, she heard the groan again and hurried to it. The man in the coat sat on the ground, back resting against a storage cabinet, shaking a metal pocket-flask upside down over his mouth. As she watched, a single red drop fell out and onto his long, outstretched tongue, but no more. He growled, furious, and slammed his fist sideways into the dented refrigerator beside him.

"Damn it!" he yelled. The smell of smoke rose from him more strongly than ever, as though his anger was burning away at him in physical fire. He groaned again and lolled his head back. Catching sight of her, he started, and sat up, wincing at a pain. "You? Here? First him, now you. _You're_ not gonna shoot me too, I hope?"

"That depends on if you wanna drink my blood, you freak," Kate responded angrily. "'The coffee here', you said! Nice try." _He might look injured, but he's dangerous. Stay mad, don't let him blindside you. Gun up._ She nodded to herself, and kept her gun raised, trained on him. She had been expecting a devil dog tugging at his corpse, but was almost convinced he'd be more dangerous. A monster couldn't charm its way out of things, though men had been talking their way out of (and into) things for centuries.

He grinned hopelessly up at her. "I did warn you not to try it, didn't I? Don't blame me if you were too stubborn to listen." His eyes rose to behind her, and his expression changed.

"Damian! You're ok!" The other girl had crept up behind Kate and, seeing her fallen friend, rushed to his side on the grubby tiles.

"Not quite ok, sweetie," he said through gritted teeth, "but it could be worse."

"She said you got hit in the chest," Kate accused. "You should be dead by now."

"Sorry to disappoint you, but he got the flask, not me, which might end up being worse. My shoulder hurts like hell, though, I think the bullets are stuck in there. I can reach round to feel them, but can't get them out myself." He reached round to demonstrate, tapping his shoulder. "Ah, dammit!"

The girl by his side looked up imploringly at Kate, who frowned unhappily, but pulled out a first aid kit from her backpack and tossed it to him with her free hand.

"There's probably bandages or something good in there," she told him. "I haven't had a chance to check yet. I met up with your pal Jeff again. He turned nasty, tried to kill us both."

"Nasty? Both? You mean you and Angela?"

"Angela? Oh! You're Angela?" The girl in the polo-neck nodded yes, and Kate continued. "No, not _us_ two, me and that Crawley guy. He's an asshole, but I guess he came through. Kept Jeff from really trying to attack me."

The man on the floor nodded slowly, thoughtfully. "He's still dangerous, though. Don't let your guard down. You either, Angela. He acts much better with the ladies, but that just makes him worse."

Kate snorted derisively and pointed at the flask in his hand.  
"And you're such an innocent, harmless little puppy-dog! You gonna tell me that held your coffee? And how come you know so much about Crawley, anyway?"

"I was told. And you know as well as I do it's not coffee, so why get nasty about it?" He reached up, struggled free of the heavy leather coat, and lifted the sleeve of his black t-shirt to expose the bloodied shoulder. Two bullet wounds stood out red and angry in the skin, and he winced as he cleaned the blood off with his hand.

"Now make your mind up, either help me out here or get gone. There's gonna be a lot of blood and shouting, 'specially since I'm gonna have to cut the things out myself." He reached for his belt and withdrew a long, blackened dagger. Angela watched it approach his shoulder, biting her lower lip anxiously. Holding it clumsily, he pointed the blade inwards and slipped it into the wound, grunting as it released new blood, new pain.

"I can feel it there," he panted, "metal on metal, I can feel it, I just can't..." he wriggled the tip within his flesh, "Ow, fuck! I can't get it to come out." He raised his eyes to hers, dark pained eyes watching her fierce blue-gray gaze over the gun she held out between them. He slumped back against the metal cabinet and brought the dagger back to his lap. She beheld the scene uncertainly. He'd helped her out when she'd been about ready to snap and give up, but he was obviously dangerous and couldn't be trusted.

_He might even be in with that creepy Crawley guy... And if he isn't? What then? He drinks BLOOD, you idiot! How can we freaking trust something like that? Yeah, but look at... what's her name... Angela. She's crying over him._

The girl at his side was indeed weeping again, but silently, as though out of despair rather than panic or her own sorrow. She seemed on the verge of saying or doing something, but withdrew every time she leant in to him to begin.

_He's been looking after her, and... I dunno.. Whatever happened to her, it doesn't sound like he did it. More like he's been trying to help her after it... And he did help me... Alright, I can help him, but I don't have to like him. Deal?_

_Deal._

She lowered the gun. "Ok, I'll help you. But you'd better stay the hell away from me if I ever get injured. I still don't trust you, and I sure as hell wouldn't trust you around me if I was bleeding."

He ducked his head in acceptance, and offered her the dagger, handle first, as she sat where Angela rose from, the other girl looking rueful that she hadn't taken the chance to... do what?

_Nevermind. More important things right now._

"Thanks. You'll need to try to dig it out from me. I've done it before, but this is too bad an angle. Cowardly bastard that he is, he got me a good one."

"You must be delirious," she told him, "complimenting him on shooting you. Now hold still, I'm gonna try for the first bullet."

"Ok, then." He took a deep breath. "I'm ready."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

It took about half an hour and a lot of blood and swearing to get the lead pellets from his arm, then clean the wounds again and patch him up, but at last it was done. Kate helped him struggle back into his coat and offered him a health drink.

"So you've still got one spare? Keep it, you'll need it more than I do." said Damian.

"But I've got three or four more! And you look like hell, pal."

He smiled tiredly, shaking his head gently. "Probably. And once I woulda taken the drink offa you, but now... And they just don't work as well as they used to."

"What happens? You get too used to them or something? What do you mean 'used to'? How long have you been here, anyway?"

He laughed out loud, a short bark of bitter mirth. "How long? God, I dunno. Decades? Centuries, it feels like sometimes. Some day I'll find a way out, just not yet, it looks like. Maybe... I dunno... maybe there's still a monster boss to take out or some damn puzzle of the place to solve before I can get out. It's different for everyone, I know that for sure."

"So some people can get out? Some people have gotten out?"

Angela stirred from her brown study on the ground. She had settled up next to the Dark Man's legs, as though she wanted to curl up on his lap, but not quite trusting herself to.  
"I saw someone just before he got out. He said he was looking for his wife, but she was dead, so he couldn't find her. Whatever he was really looking for, I guess he found it, cause I saw him leave through the churchyard following a little blonde girl."

_So there is a way out, I just need to find out why I'm here first and then I can start getting out, _Kate mused. "You said I should go home, find out why I'm in this screwy... 'version', I guess, of the town, right? That whatever brought me here should have left some clue there?" She fixed the Dark Man (_Damian, his name's Damian. So why do I still think of him as the Dark Man?_) with a glare. If he dared lie to her now...

"That's right. It won't get you all the way out, probably. But you might get some idea of what's going on. Or you could just hang around the mall some more." He clambered to his feet and walked towards the kitchen exit, brushing past Kate in the narrow space between the rows of ovens and cabinets. The scent of smoke and leather trailed behind him and broke upon her body, rolling up to her nose and into her mouth, the rich smooth smells lapping across her tongue. "Whatever you decide, though," he continued, "there's a few things I've got to take care of, so you'll have to decide by yourself."

He stopped and turned, taking a step back towards the end of the kitchen, he stood almost at Kate's side, but leant away from her as he looked to the girl on the ground "Angela? Do you wanna stay with Kate or...?"

The girl looked up, blinking owlishly, and chewed a lip in thought.  
"I.. I wanna stay with Kate, please." How this girl, almost a woman at her age, which Kate guessed to be about nineteen, could be so cowed and timid as to be asking someone's permission on something like that, left Kate astonished. _Permission? She has to ask his permission? Was Crawley right, is he keeping her prisoner?_

"Ok, then. But make sure you're both careful." He reached into his coat, and retrieved a fresh cigarette. Lighting it, he continued, "They'll smell you both: Kate because she's bleeding, and you because they know you. And they're always... hungry. You got bullets, Kate?"

"Yeah, I think I've got some left after that fight. But, we'll probably have to go through the amusement park to get to my place, and I'm not sure that'll be any safer than this mall."

He tossed her a box of bullets from his pocket. Revolver bullets, and a perfect fit for her gun.

"Hey! How did you know...? Huh?"

The kitchen was silent. Damian, the Dark Man, had left, and the two girls were alone once more.

**A/N - Braces self for reviews**

**  
GLBT - thanks for the comment on the short chapters, I feel a lot better about those chapters that do end up short now.**

**MLS - Nah, you're doing better than I. Update Luce again, dammit! ;-) **


	13. Getting Out

**A/N - It's getting harder to get both the time and inspiration to write these days. But I persevere.**

Bewildered, Kate peered forward to the other end of the kitchen, the door hadn't moved an inch. "Ok," she began, returning to the other girl, "Does that guy _ever_ do anything _normal_? Like, you know, use the door to leave a place or something?"

A strange small smile from Angela. "Normal? When I met him I thought he was my Mama, til I got up close. I thought everyone was my Mama, till I saw their faces, that's how bad I wanted to find her. Nothing here is _normal_, and there's something.. _wrong_ with this town. I've known that ever since I met the blonde man in the graveyard, and it's only gotten worse since then, even if he did save me from..." Her head sunk in remembrance, and Kate saw the smile slipping from her face as she remembered... what?

Kate put a hand on Angela's shoulder. "Do you... he didn't... " she began, meaning to ask Angela what happened next, if she was ok, offer a listening ear, but the other girl took her hand in her own and smiled sadly at Kate.

"We've got to go. They'll start coming back soon. Doesn't matter how many times they get killed, there's always more somewhere." She got up and stood next to Kate. "You wanted to get to your home through the Amusement Park?"

"Uh, yeah," Kate said, "there's a train goes from here to the Park, we can try that."

Hand in hand, the two girls left the pizzeria and the mall, and headed through the empty fog-filled streets for the train. It was waiting in its berth when they got there, empty and silent. A long steel pipe, about three feet in length, lay on the ground, and a red piece of paper had been tacked to the door across the carriage from the one they entered by. Kate crouched to pick up the pipe, while Angela examined the paper, blood-red and unmarked.

"Seems...weird," muttered the dark-haired girl, "like, like something's crawling inside my head. Argh!" She cried out and clutched at her head, pressing soft hair hard against her suddenly hot skin. Kate rose to catch her, and the doors slammed behind them, trapping them in the carriage. With a jerk, the train left its place, and began a silent cruise through the enshrouding fog. Kate lowered the girl to the floor, and watched the moving fog swirl past the windows, the red paper seeming to glare at her with its own bloody pulse. Angela's breathing normal, Kate left her to lie there and stepped forward to examine the thing that had caused her new friend to pass out.

At first a crawling, scrabbling sensation in the eyes, then through the eyes into the bone. The feeling grew, and grew, gathering strength for a jump. It leapt, and filled her head with terrible song. Screaming, singing, crying and an insane laughter. And visions. Split-second visions. A hospital bed, with a bloodied and battered figure lying on it. Broken-footed figures lurching up corridors towards her. A rushing darkness with no end in sight. Flicker to the bed, the figure moving and groaning. The rushing darkness. Flicker to the shambling figures, nurses after a long shift. The darkness again, with a light in sight. Twitching heads with no features. A gaping maw. Razor teeth. The rushing dark, the dark, and the light approaching, soothing and blinding. Figures, blood, a flickering kaleidosope of screams and horrors, and a sudden end of the darkness as the light hit her. The soothing light at the end of her tunnel hit her head on, a freight-train coming her way, and she was knocked out of the reverie with a start. She gasped and staggered back as though struck in the chest with an open palm. Hitting the doors behind her cleared her head of the sounds and sights of the second-sight the visions had flashed, and she saw Angela propping herself up on the shaking floor, looking from the paper to Kate.

Bewildered again, and suddenly angry with it, Kate strode forward to the paper and glared at it. Two new entries had appeared, an ochre-red against the scarlet of the paper.

**Angela Orosco - Lakeside Train  
Katelyn Morgan - Lakeside Train**

And the floor rumbled under her feet, sending the strong shudders of metal on metal up through her boots and into her body. The fog swirled past the windows, and Angela's hot hand clasped her own as she rose.

"So I guess we're going to go see Robbie the Rabbit, huh?" asked Angela. "My Daddy always said he'd take me there if I was good, but I was always too bad to deserve anything... Anything like..." She broke off, and stared at her bright pink sneakers.

_Pink sneakers. Good call, Kate, why not just give her a Barbie-doll and put a ribbon in her hair? _Kate berated herself,_ She's close enough to breaking down completely and you go make her feel more like a little girl than ever. Next she'll be expecting her Dad to turn up and... ohgodno. In this place that might actually happen. No. Can't allow that._

Thinking fast, Kate squeezed the girl's hand and forced a smile. "Nonsense. You definitely deserve a nice trip there. But the place is probably gonna be worse than the mall, so we'll just go straight through and head home, ok? Come on." Pulling the girl's arm gently (but firmly) she lead her through the door at the end of the carriage, steel pipe in one hand, lost girl in the other.

The door slammed to behind them, and the lights flickered. Once. Twice. Out.

**A/N - In my defence, it's not 100 filler. Review like you mean it. :-)**


	14. The Unhappiest Place on Earth

**A/N - I had to re-write this chapter to deal with some consistency issues. Sorry.**

Kate peered blindly into the empty carriage in front of her. _There's gotta be some emergency lights or something, right?_ She gave Angela's hand what she hoped was a reassuring squeeze and hefted the steel pipe with the other hand, the weight giving her some reassurance of her own. As she shifted, the weight of the flashlight in her blouse pocket bumped against her chest, and with a shock of memory she reached up to it and switched it on.

The pale light shone out in a ghostly beam, illuminating an empty carriage. Nothing but discarded newspapers, soda cans, and the occasional graffiti scrawl. "A REED for da SUN", proclaimed one spray-can marking. Shaking her head at the stupidity of it, Kate stepped forward, making sure to compensate for the swaying of the floor beneath her feet. Angela followed meekly, head down, eyes fixed on the ground, away from the windows. They reached the next interconnecting door like that, the blonde leading the blind, and passed into the next carriage.

The first thing Kate noticed about the third carriage was the smell, as though something had died with nasal vengeance on its mind. The second thing was the light, which was back on. The window to her left was graffiti-strewn in red spray; 'GOD loves Her DAUGHTERS'.

Frowning at the tone, fanatical and barbaric, Kate edged past that window carefully, making sure not to get close. Angela needed no warning. Both could feel the vibes coming from the paint. Whoever had done that work of urban art had had more than 'tagging' on their minds, a power had lived in their veins, had been expressed in their lives, and made its mark on the paint. A Presence emanated from the paint, and watching it made the eyes believe it pulsed. Once they passed the window, the smell began to lessen, and they allowed themselves to relax a little.

As they passed the next bank of seats a scrabbling sounded from the steel roof, as of sharp claws panicked into a frenzy, a mewling and hissing surrounded the carriage, and suddenly the train passed into darkness in a tunnel. The lights failed, and sound fell still.

Kate whirled and turned, trying to keep an eye on all angles, watch all the windows. The thing on the ceiling had sounded big and powerful, and also scared and angry enough to take the face off anything it could reach. A spark under the train lit up the carriage and showed more graffiti. The same message, scrawled in red paint, all across the inside walls, dripping onto the seats. "GOD IS WITH US" screamed the paint. A rusty copper smell arose, a sickening heat cooking the smell in Kate and Angela's nostrils, making them gag.

Angela fell to her knees, dragging Kate to her own. Muttering blindly, Angela repeated to herself "The Old Gods, God is here. The Old Gods, God is here. The Old Gods, God is here," voice rising and unsteady. Kate tried to pat her, calm her down, but the heat made her ill, and her stomach began to cramp. Bent over double, she saw a black cat pad calmly into view from behind a seat and behold her dry-retching. In its maw was held a small doll. _Hell in a Happy Burger uniform. Jeff..._ she thought muzzily, reaching out to save the doll. With fading vision, she thought she saw it wave an arm desperately as the Creature swallowed it whole.

The Cat approached, and the stench grew stronger still, with the rotting corpse smell returning. As It came closer, Kate could see that the thing's fur was matted with blood, its head ripped open, and one paw missing. With a terrific effort, she swung the steel pipe at it, and the metal passed right through it, meeting no resistance. _A ghost!_ she gloated internally, _can't hurt me unless I let it, just like Jeff_ .

Screwing up her strength, she raised her head again to scream defiance at the Cat, but met instead the blind eyes of a cat corpse. The lights were restored, and the fog passed blithely around the train as it slowed to a stop.

"Lakeside Amusement Park" announced a voice. "Please keep all personal belongings and children safe and close to you. All change please."

Tugging Angela's hand, Kate rose. Angela looked up blearily, face streaked with tears, eyes red from crying.

"Come on, Angela," said Kate, as gently and calmly as she could manage, "let's get out of here" The calm facade was a massive effort, the whole episode had reminded her way too much of the fight with Jeff, and that had been bad enough. This had been much worse. Her stomach ached horribly, though the cramping pain had passed, and she felt sick to her throat. Fighting all this down, she pulled gently on Angela's hand, the sooner they left, the better.

The girl got up and joined Kate on shaky feet. Together the girls left the train and its platform, not daring to look back. Just in case.

The amusement park was always open for the public to get through, a route from the local mall to the residential area further north, and the two young women began to make their way through the empty amusement park.

A few minutes walk brought them to their first surprise, a Robbie the Rabbit mascot suit sprawled across the path. Chunks had been torn from its fur, and blood matted the wounds. A sinister smear of red matted the fur around the mouth of the suit. Neither girl wanted to get close enough to examine it properly, and Kate kept an edgy trigger finger at the ready. Further along the pathway lay another Robbie costume, a similar marking on its mouth, blood-matted wounds in the fur. The girls pushed on, climbing fences where necessary, opening gates where possible. After a few minutes they passed an empty ticket booth. A rollercoaster track loomed over their heads, a towering desolation. No carts ran and the place had the air of one utterly deserted. Not uninhabited, deserted. Somehow waiting as though only half the action had taken place, in which the mascots had died, and the park had emptied and this was the empty time between.

Kate realised she had been holding her breath, waiting for the sudden action, whatever it would be. The air of anticipation was maddening, and heightening as time passed. The sun was setting now, and the park would soon be enveloped in darkness. They had to get moving, and soon. She tugged on Angela's arm to get her to follow.Eyes glazed, bordering on dead, Angela followed Kate with a calm the blonde girl could only wish she felt. Then she looked into Angela's eyes again and realised that she would never want that kind of calm. It was the kind that comes out of the other side of despair, that dull acceptance which is not acceptance, but a resignation so total all action is mere habit.

Kate headed for the nearest open door, a shortcut through the nearest attraction would get them to the centre of the park quickly, the carousel with the painted horses, and from there it'd be easy to get back home. Another red paper was tacked to the wall of the ticket booth, just as on the train carriage. Again Kate found herself drawn to it, again that feeling of nausea, a flickering maelstrom of broken images. No more detail than before, though, she still couldn't make out more than half the things she saw. This time, when the trance ended, she was able to keep her balance, and was less suprised to see her name on the sheet. Angela stayed clear of the thing, shaking her head vehemently at it. Kate shrugged, and they stepped on through into the attraction

The door swung shut behind them, and a realisation hit Kate with a chill. No tannoy had ever been installed in the train. In all the times she'd used it to get to the mall and home again, no tannoy had ever sounded. The owners had wanted to save money wherever possible. As the door into the mansion proper swung open in accordance with the mechanisms, the park's real tannoy cut in on Kate's thoughts.

"Welcome to the Borley Haunted Mansion!"

Outside, the red paper flapped in the wind:

**Kate Morgan - Borley Mansion**

**A/N - Just so you all know, I'm putting Crawling on hold till I can get the girls to the church and figure out timing etc from the SH3 FMV. As usual, reviews will be greatly appreciated. Big thanks to MLS1984 and GaiaFaye for taking the time to beta this, it wouldn't be here without you both. Thanks.  
**


	15. Full House

**A/N - Once again, 'real world' stuff gets in the way. But I have overcome long enough to produce a new chapter. Huzzah!**

"We're so glad you came," continued the voice, "Please, come inside and look around," urged the friendly tannoy speaker, "When you feel you are ready, then go through the door. We're simply _dying_ to meet you". Kate suppressed a grimace at the pun, while Angela peered nervously into the gloomy interior.

"I don't think I like this," she said, "a haunted house is bad, but they want to _meet_ us. We'll be ok, though, right Kate?"

"We'll be fine. And it's Katie" muttered the blonde as they entered the first room, a blood-spattered dining room, set for dinner with silver shining. A row of windows along one wall showed nothing but the darkness outside, a line of black, dead eyes staring at them.

"What's that, Kate?"

"Katie," repeated the blonde, taking in the scene "all my good friends call me Katie. But nobody else." Something was wrong here. It was quiet, too quiet... she edged up to the barrier between the pathway for the customers to take and the sectioned-off area with the dining table and seats. Something about the setup bothered her. Gun at the ready, she climbed over the barrier and edged up to the windows. Angela followed, stammering thanks. When Kate nodded absent-mindedly and raised her gun in the direction of the windows, the other girl fell silent. She, too, must have felt something was wrong. Frowning as she considered the place, the girl appeared to come to some conclusion, opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted by a voice from above.

From the ceiling above them, a man's voice rose in fear and anger "Look, I tell you I have no idea what you're talking about! Paradise? Some kind of crazy sacrifice? I don't know anything about all that! I'm just here to count the money and hand it over to Mr Tookey when he comes to pick it up. He'd better get here soon, too, this place is starting to freak me out. Even more than you, my little junkie friend. And you! You oughta know better than to hang around with psychos like this."

As the girls listened, footsteps approached the unseen speaker above their heads. A younger voice spoke. "But I do know better. Jasper knows it's gonna happen. We're waiting for the Sign. All we need is to know the way to Paradise. And you're going to show us."

A sound of thumping and struggling, and then gagging. The older man's voice again. "Look, you can _take_ the money! I don't care, just lemme - ACK! - Lemme go! I've got a wife and kids, they need me to come home!"

"Hu-hu- Hold him st-st- still," stuttered a second young man's voice, "du- du- don't let him escape."

"You try it, man, he's flapping like crazy", came the first young man's voice over the continuing pleas of the first speaker.

"Gu- gu- gu- got him!" exclaimed the other, "tu- tu- tie that end on here, Du- Du- Danny!"

"Wait! Stop, please, I'll... I'll do anything you want! There's more cash! I can.. I can get you the drugs or whatever. I know a dealer, you can have all the White Claudia you want."

"Jasper," came the voice of the first young man, Danny "dude, isn't this a bit...? I mean, come on, God couldn't make this the path to heaven? You said you'd show me! And then it wouldn't matter that I lost my way! That I couldn't ever go back to New Orleans."

A pause, and then angrily, "We can't kill this guy! What's the path to heaven? This isn't it, what's the way to Paradise?"

A scuffling thumping from above, and a yell, suddenly cut off, as glass shattered. Angela stifled a shriek with her hands clapped over her mouth and jumped back from the window. Kate spun, gun raised, and saw the reason. A man's body, suspended from a rope around the neck, was silhouetted against a spotlight. The girls watched in horror as the body jerked and jumped a horrible fandango, and was suddenly still. Kate's heart sank, the murder had been so brutal and callous. "Poor guy..." she said quietly. Angela pulled on her arm, anxious to leave, and they had almost reached the door when Danny's voice spoke from above them again.

"Jasp... Jasper... what've you...done?"

"It had to be done." Jasper's voice again, but no trace of a stutter "There must be sacrifices. Things must be done properly. Heaven will be attained... with blood-stained hands."

"Blood-stained hands? What the hell? What happened to your stutter? Jasper, what the hell is going on here, man?"

"You'll never know. You can't. You're the Sixth Seal. The Lost One. The Sixth... Sacrifice"

"No! You can't...! We're pals! Buddies! Get away from me!"

A slamming and clunking footsteps as a door slammed overhead and Danny fled into the next room. The girls passed through the doorway, entering a study, and the footsteps came to a thudding halt above as Jasper pounded on the slammed door, trying to gain access.

"Shit!" Danny's voice. "No way out! Wait, there's a door..." A rattling and pounding from the far side of the room. Drawn in an agony of morbid fascination, the girls clambered the railings to get into the display area, ears tilted to the ceiling (_the better to hear you with, my dear_ thought Kate manically). Danny screamed in frustration. "God-DAMN IT! Lemme out!"

"But of course. If you insist." Jasper's voice came from directly above the girls, and Danny yelled in fear and shock, his shoes squeaking ridiculously on the floor above as he spun round to face the other man.

"But you... I... The door, it's still closed, I barred it!"

"All things are possible in God," came the terrifying voice, "She will lead the way for all Her children. Whom She loves. Her sons, and her Daughters..."

A choking and scrabbling. With her mind's eye, Kate could see the unseen Danny trying to burrow his way out through the locked door, eyes wide and terrified.

"But now," the voice came closer to Danny's, "you and I... have unfinished business. You must go through the place, from above to below, as She will bring all the world from the above to Her Heaven below. The way to heaven? It's right here... Hahahaa!"

An anguished scream, going beyond pain and fear, trailing off all too suddenly to a gurgle. The ceiling, which the girls were watching fearfully, rippled unpleasantly. A face protruded slightly, mouth open in a silent scream. Angela buried her face in Kate's shoulder and sobbed quietly as the last survivor on the second floor exulted.

"The Third Revelation! It will happen soon! The Ho- Ho- Holy Mother... Damn it! The Holy Mother will return to us!" Jasper's voice gave way to wild laughter, and a sound of running footsteps and a slamming door were the last the girls heard of him.

Now Kate was less sure about their safety. Ghosts couldn't harm them, but this 'Jasper' sounded like a real nasty piece of work. Specially since his stutter would make him seem funny and a little kooky rather than the dangerously insane man he was. Kate turned to leave, and froze in the act. The door leading out of the room, at the other end of the path marked out for park guests, creaked open. With a shuffling sound, a tall, hunched figure shambled into the room and caught sight of the two young girls.

"Well now," said the stocky, middle-aged man, "you're working late tonight, girls!" (Kate hid the pistol in her pockets as he spoke) "I knew we'd taken on some new closers, but you're outta luck here, I'm afraid, all the guests have gone home now. There's probably a few still hanging around at the carousel, though, so you might wanna go hurry them along." He approached them with a slow smile, "don't mind me, I'm just gonna... sit here and take my ease for a bit. At my age you need a good rest up before heading out anywhere, and it's a long way before I get back to my little house and comfy bed." (Angela gripped Kate's arm as the man drew closer, and both the girls backed up)

Checking himself, the man stopped and turned. Locking the door he had come through, he put the keys in his pocket and turned back to them, smiling broadly. "There now, can't have any guests wandering in to the cash room, can we? You know the bosses, any nickel so much as looks off, they'll come down on ya like _that_." He snapped his fingers, winking. "Still, though," he went on, "can't have any lip from closers. One girl used to work as a closer here, pretty young thing, used to gripe me about that. 'Oh please Mr Tookey, can't you make them stop hassling me?' Well now, I couldn't help her with that, no sir. But still..." He had reached the seat by now, and lowered himself into it with a satisfied grunt, "I took her mind off it alright. She quit after a couple weeks, but in the time before that, she stopped complaining about it. Kinda hard to say anything when... Ah, but you don't wanna hear me blather on." He turned a sparkling eye on Angela. "How about you sweetie? How are you liking it here? You come sit here," he patted the padded armrest, "and tell your uncle John all about it, huh?"

"Mister, we've gotta get-" began Kate, but was interrupted.

"Oh now, don't you worry about that. They don't mind new closers taking a little longer. Takes time to get to know the place, God knows. Yes She does, oh yes. They saw you come in here, I'll bet, so they know you're with me. I haven't seen them for a while, nobody else in, oh long hours, but I guess that just means a quiet day." He smiled lazily, "They always let new young ladies get to know me properly. Come on now, shy girl, it'll all be ok." And, to Kate's amazement, Angela stepped forward, hesitantly, head bowed, to the fat man in the chair. His smile broadened and he reached out to stroke her knee. "That's a girl. You and me are gonna be real _good_ friends. I've got so much to show you, so much to do with you. With you both." He turned his head and smiled at Kate, who was frozen in shock. To have come through all this just to find a... a... a dirty old man with sweaty palms? She saw him run a hand over Angela's leg. Angela turned to Kate, for help? For instruction? Kate froze, and could make no move. The man smirked, and ran his hand upwards. AsKate watched, she saw the other girl close her eyes and grimace resignedly, a single tear forming in her eyes, and could do nothing. Against dogs, and zombie guards, that was... had been simple, if not easy. Those things were obvious. But for this? Should she call the police? Was she mis-reading it? This couldn't be happening, could it? Angela must be taking it wrong... or... or something. The first tear was joined by another, and Tookey smiled and pulled the weeping girl towards him "There now, you know we're gonna have us some fun, honey, it'll be good."

With a massive wrench, Kate thrust away the worries, and reached for her gun as Tookey reached for Angela's belt. And fired as he began to unbuckle it. The shot took his nose off and he arced his body back violently, screaming in agony. The chair rocked under him as he shrieked. "You little bitches! I'll get you for this! Think you can just lead me on and then fuck me over! He reached out and grabbed between Angela's legs, and choked, his arm faltering. He threw himself back into the seat, clawing at his throat. As Angela backed away, sobbing uncontrollably, Kate moved around to the front of the chair, gun levelled at him, ready to finish the job. A growling sound grew in the air, and Tookey's throat gurgled. His hands flapped helplessly at it and his eyes were wide in fear and panic. The colour of his skin was changing, spreading from the throat to his head, his hands turning that same colour. A fabric colour. Immobilised now, he could only gurgle and roll his eyes, a living dummy rocking in a chair in a fake house. The growling stopped. Incandescent with rage, Kate smacked him across the face, his lack of reaction reassured her that he was stuck like this.

She leaned in close to his face, close enough that she knew he could smell her hair, see her chest, and spoke clearly into his face, her sweet breath washing over him. "I'm gonna leave you like this, you sick bastard. I don't know what the hell just happened to you, but I'm glad it did. You're gonna sit here like this forever, always seeing, never able to touch, not even move. You'll never hurt another girl. Ever." She stood back, adjusted her skirt and top for full tantalising effect, and, taking Angela's hand, smiled sweetly. "Bye-bye, Mr Tookey. Burn in hell!"

With that, they left the barricaded area and took the only door left available, the one Tookey hadn't locked and they'd not come in by, which had the gray appearance of a service door.

The room beyond the gray-blue door had once been an opulent bedchamber. Once. Now, though, the walls cracked their stale mould-green wallpaper, the floorboards creaked and groaned underfoot, and the air lay heavy and thick, choking and sickly-sweet. The bed itself, off in a corner to their left, was made and unblemished. Later, once they had left the 'mansion', Kate realised that that was the second strangest thing of the place, the complete absence of any bloodstains or real breakage.

The strangest thing, though, caught her attention immediately on entering the room. Bars of iron blocked the way to most of the room, a real barricade instead of the sharp iron railings in the previous rooms. A single path through the center of the room was the only option, the ceiling of which somebody had, for some unknown reason, covered with iron spikes bearing downwards. As they approached the pathway, Angela whimpered, unable to take her eyes off the bed visible through the bars, and pressed against the bars on the other side of the passage, scarcely able to move. Kate tugged at her, anxious to leave. The air was sickening, a bad mixture of a man's sweat, cheap cologne, and something strongly alcoholic. Tears before bedtime. Angela, though, stuck fast, gripping on to the bars behind her in her panic. Kate turned to look at the bed. Clean sheets, tidy blankets, nothing special. And in the blink of an eye, she could have sworn that the blankets shifted, the head end raising itself up ever so slightly. No. Crazy to think like that. _The air must be getting to me_, she thought, and tugged on Angela's hand again. "Come on, Angela!" The air made her drowsy, her voice slurred, "We've gotta... gotta go..." Angela shook her head frantically, eyes tearful again. "Fuckin' crybaby..." muttered Kate. _Wait, did I just say...? That's not right! _"Angela... I... we got to..." Kate tapped her head with the palm of her hand in a desperate attempt to clear it. Angela gulped hard, watching her with wide dark eyes. "Come on, Angie..." wheedled Kate. The other girl opened her mouth to speak, but could make no noise, and made no move to join Kate at the entrance to the 'passage' the bars formed.

Exasperated, Kate threw up her hands. "Fine! Fine! Stay there, then. You deserve whatever fear your giving yourself. I'm getting the fuck outta here!" Kate stepped into the passageway, feeling more muzzy with each step. The floor beneath her creaked and Angela finally found her voice.

"Katie! Please!" As Kate heard the fear in the girl's voice, her head cleared, and she spun around, but too late. The blankets of the bed erupted up. Angela shrieked, and the iron spikes fell downwards, piercing Kate's skull in an instant. She staggered, eyes blinded by the flowing blood, and the bars rose up into the ceiling again as she fell to the floor. The last thing Kate Morgan heard was Angela. Pretty little Angela, barely three years older than Kate. Beautiful dark-eyed Angela shrieking "No Daddy! Please, don't!"

Kate Morgan died, facedown in her own blood.

**A/N - Big thanks to MLS for beta-reading most of this chapter for me. :-)**


	16. Ex Nihilo

Darkness. Pitch black. In the void, weeping and screaming. A low threatening growling. The moans of the dead and dying, and the whimpers of the fearful. No eyes to see with, no voice to cry out with, just consciousness, and that only barely. It would be so easy to give up, no more pain, no more fear, no more suffering. But something in her rebelled, a deeper fire even than that fuelled by the hell the blackness concealed. Giving up would be too easy, too cowardly. But how could she go back to that? Her spirit almost quailed entirely at the thought of returning, and two voices spoke from the dark. One offered peace, an unending light and relaxation. "You can give up. It's alright, we won't think any the less of you. Give it up, join us." A sweet, alluring voice offering peace, an end to the trials. But the other voice wouldn't let up, either.

"You think this is it? _This_ is the best you can do? Get up! She needs you, and you need to finish this. You won't have this choice forever. Whatever it is, _make_ your choice. Now!"

The darkness broke, the light offered by the sweet voice shone, while the darkness waited behind her, hungry as ever. Cold, dirty, and malicious, the void waited silently while the light shone ever on. Kate mustered her energy and made her choice.

She threw herself back. Back into the void, back to where she had made her choice. The shrieking and growling rang in her ears as she fell through the darkness, the moans of the dead ringing in her ears.

The ground was hard beneath her, the flashlight dug into her body. The moaning had ceased, and the shrieking was muted, but the growling was louder than ever. Groaning, the young woman on the floor propped herself up and looked around in a daze. The door immediately in front of her was the entrance to the Borley Mansion, and the growling was - the Dog? She pulled herself to her feet with a suddenness brought on by realisation. The shrieking and growling had continued because they were real, here. The growling was the Dog, which she saw had scraped deep scratches into the door in trying to get through. So the shrieking would be...

"Angela!" Kate breathed, horrified. She grabbed the handle and shoved it open, letting herself and the Dog into the building. Both bolted across the entry hall, through the dining room, and into the study. The seat Tookey had frozen in still creaked as his body rocked, and the shrieking from the next room was louder than ever, punctuated only with hopeless whimpers, then starting up again as some fresh horror began. Kate ran to the door, yanked it open, and ran forward to the bars. Angela was trapped in the bed, screaming as -

Kate clapped a hand over her mouth, backing away from the terrible sight on the other side of the bars, and was knocked against the wall as the huge black Dog rushed at the bars, seemed to flicker, and was suddenly on the other side. It pounced on the thing pinning Angela to the bed, and began to tussle with it. Angela jumped from the bed, fell over her torn clothing, and run to the other side of the enclosure, away from Kate, but to the open cage door. Kate ran to follow her, crouching as she passed under the spikes, which fell well short of her head, and met her on the far side, grabbing her into a fierce embrace while the other girl held tight for all she could. The battle between beast and monster was becoming truly frantic now, howling and screeching and growling, and was suddenly cut short with a last gurgle. Kate turned her head slowly, dreading the sight of the Dog's corpse and the monster coming towards them. The sight that met her eyes, though, was that of the monster torn to pieces, and the Dog raising itself, dripping hot black blood, from the pieces of corpse surrounding the foot of the bed. The Dog rose up unsteadily, looked at the girls, and reached down for the thing's head, lifting it up to display to the girls. It made two tired steps before half the head came away from the rest and fell to the ground. The great canine looked down, bewildered, and dropped the rest of the head to the ground, then limped away.

The Dog reached the door out of the cage. It raised its eyes to meet the girls', then lowered its eyes and head again slowly, as though ashamed. Kate grimaced at the scene beyond, the blood and bed, while Angela collapsed against her, sobbing.

Kate fumbled for the exit door, and let herself and the other two out into the passageway beyond.

Two winding passageways lead them out of the house. The journey was undertaken in silence, Kate had nothing to say, Angela clung mutely to her. Once out of the Mansion, the two did not stop, but continued walking, dumbly fixing on their footsteps. The Dog padded silently next to them, staying resolutely on the other side of Angela to Kate, head swinging left to right, growling quietly at any passing shadow or swirl of fog. They saw no more monsters for the rest of that journey, and Kate could never be sure in her mind whether that was due to the Dog or a simple lack of monsters. Eventually they reached the centre of the amusement park, the horse carousel that was the main attraction of the park. The path beyond, however, was blocked off. A shimmering wall with a door set into it created a certain inevitability about the future. Listlessly, the girls passed through the door, up a dirty mud passageway, through another door, along a long white passageway, up some stairs and through a wooden door, stopping only when they realised where they were, and that the Dog had vanished. A huge chapel building, walls and windows blazing triumphant with stained glass and religious paintings, and up at the front, behind the altar, a blonde woman in a long black robe busied herself with something liturgical, her back to the aisle.

As they stood in the aisle, the girls heard the door click to behind them, but only just, and paid no attention. The priestess at the altar spun around, facing down the aisle towards them. Her face contorted, the priestess spoke.

"How did _you_ get here?"


	17. Going to the chapel

Kate took a hurried step back. Wherever this place was, the creepy blonde at the altar obviously didn't want them here. Stuttering, she made her way up the aisle (Angela hung back, clinging close to an ornate column) and began to apologise. "I - I'm sorry. I'll go away, if you'll just tell me how to get - "

The priestess cut her off in mid-sentence and Kate stopped, just shy of the head of the aisle. "It was Vincent, wasn't it? _He_ led you here." Her face darkened, "When will he _cease_ his meddling?" A thought appeared to strike her. "But it's just as well. Luring you here also serves _my_ purposes."

From behind the bewildered girls came a sound Kate had gotten used to since her walk began. A gun clicked, ready to fire. Kate whirled and saw, coming up right behind her, a blonde girl pointing a gun right at her. Kate choked back a gasp, not daring to even blink in the cold stare of the black steel. As Kate watched, the unknown girl spoke.

"Checkmate."

Behind Kate, the older woman shook her head. "Not yet," she said calmly, "the time is not yet at hand." She raised her hands and eyes, spoke as though preaching. "The time when all will be forgiven their sins. When the paradise we have long dreamed for will arrive. After the Judgment and Atonement, an eternity of bliss."

Kate didn't dare move. Barely dared blink. The girl in front of her stared straight through her, gaze boring into her skull.

The priestess spoke again, her voice strangely changed, "Ohh, Alessa. The world you wanted is nearly here..."

"That's _not_ what I want." said the girl, holding her gun steadily aimed at the woman. Her voice had changed, too, deliberate, definite, and filled with grim intent. Inches from the girl's face, Kate saw the change in her eyes. A new strength flooded up from behind the girl's mind. Or an old one, rediscovered. Suddenly Kate realised that it didn't matter what she did, neither the blonde in front of her nor the woman behind was paying the slightest attention. Breath held tight, she edged away between the seats and watched from the side as the darkpriestess looked straight at the girl.

She sounded surprised. "Not _you_. Alessa. Your _true_ self." She tapped her heart. Kate frowned. True self? Some kind of New Age self-discovery? No, it was creepier than that, a whole lot nastier, too.

The girl shook her head, "But I _am_ Alessa." She stepped forward, her voice dripping with sympathy. Or cruelty? "My little Claudia. My dear, sweet sister."

The blonde woman came around the altar, stunned. "Alessa? Is it _you_? Ohhh, how I've missed you!"

The girl ignored this. "I don't _need_ another world," she said coldly. "It's fine the way it is."

The woman was confused, "But you said it yourself 'The world must first be cleansed with fire.' "

"But _that's not_ what I want now." A completely different voice, yet the same as before. Impossible, but Kate was seeing it right there in front of her.

"Alessa, don't you _want_ happiness?" asked the woman, bewildered. "Have you become blind to all the hopeless suffering in the world? We _need_... we all _need_ God's salvation!"

The other blonde's voice changed again, no longer 'Alessa's, but that of a young girl. One running out of patience. "Listen. Suffering is a fact of life. Either you learn to deal with that or you go under." She clutched at her stomach suddenly and groaned as though it hurt her. Straightening up again, she carried on. "You can stay in your little dream world, but you can't keep hurting other people." She clutched at her side again, removed her hand to wave it at 'Claudia'. "Besides," she continued, "I'll _never_ forgive you for hurting my father."

The woman in black shook her head. "I wish only for the salvation of mankind. But for that to happen, the _world_ must first be remade. And for that we need God."

The girl was furious. "You self-righteous witch! No one asked you to help!" The pain seemed to be back now, she grabbed her belly and fell to her knees.

The priestess gestured. "God is growing within you." She sounded satisfied, as though some plan of hers was working out. Kate's confusion was growing within her, too. Was the girl on the ground pregnant? But no, the priestess had said 'God', and that just didn't work. The girl on the ground said nothing, but groaned with pain as she clutched hers stomach. The priestess spoke again. "You despise me, don't you?"

"You're damned right I do!" growled the girl through gritted teeth.

The woman in black smiled and nodded as 'Alessa' clutched at her stomach. "That's good." And with that, she turned and left.

The girl on the ground whimpered in pain, but forced herself to stand. The pain must have been subsiding, as she was able to take things in again.

She took a quick look at the paintings above the altar, portraits of a man and a woman offering a reed and a snake to the sun. A cursory glance, at best, and then ignored them. Grabbing a tablet on the shelf behind the altar, 'Alessa' growled in anger, reloaded her gun, and gave chase, slamming the door behind her. Sirens sounded in the distance and Kate's vision blurred.

When she could see again, it all looked the same. Empty except for her, Angela huddled against the column wrapped in shadows. As Kate's gaze fell on her, Angela shrank back, the shadows shifting around her, embracing her. Standing in the shade, she began to relax visibly. _Guess she needs some time alone_, thought Kate, and turned back to the altar. To see Nathan Crawley appear from nowhere and nearly knock her over.

**A/N - Whew! It's been a while since a new chapter. I can only apologise. My thanks to everyone who reviewed, you guys kept me going on this when my own drive began to flag. This story isn't worthy of you all. Yet.**

**One day, it will be. **


	18. A Time and a Place

Skidding to a halt, he pulled out his gun and aimed it at her in a single motion. With a movement that owed more to fear and instinct than thought, Kate slapped hard at his hand, knocking the gun flying, and punched him straight in the throat with the hand holding her gun.

He fell back hard and sprawled on the floor gasping for breath. She stepped forward and rested a booted foot on his crotch, just to keep him from trying anything dumb. Dazedly, he looked up and tried to crawl backwards, away from her. _Oh no you don't, pal_, thought Kate, and she squeezed the trigger. The tiles at his head flew up in a crash of dust and clay, and he yelled out. He froze, waiting.

_Unseen by either of the two, Angela crouched against her column. The shadows behind her solidified and the Dog padded out of them to her side. Sitting quietly, it allowed her to hug it fiercely, making no protest at the choking around its throat or her foot on its tail. Rocking silently with the Dog in her arms, Angela watched her new friend and the strange man wait each other out, trying not to think at all. Thinking meant remembering. And remembering hurt too much... _

Kate tried to control her breathing, tried to think clearly. Or at all. As calmly as possible, she spoke to the man on the ground. "You just stay where you are, pal. Don't you move a fucking muscle. You and me, we're gonna have us a little chat…" _Hmmn, gee, that sounded familiar, _she thought. _No prizes for inventiveness, Katie. _

"Gh... Gnhgh?" H e struggled to prop himself up on his elbows. "Wstfg... wharredoi..?"

"Hah! Try that one again, pal. In English, this time, _if_ you don't mind." She waved the gun at him encouragingly. _Dumbass,_ she thought, _runs like a big scared kid and tries to shoot whatever he doesn't like or understand. _

He swallowed hard, tried again. "What... are... you... doing?"

"Trying to get home, asshole, just like before. And here you are, getting in my way, again, waving guns around, again. I'm gettin' kinda tired of this, you know?"

He pointed at Kate's gun with his disarmed hand. "You can't really talk, kid, you being the one standing over me with a gun. We're all born equal, ya know, I've got a right to a gun just like you do."

"Not when you can't control yourself, you don't. You haven't even got enough control to keep away from Angela in a place like this, what makes you good enough for that kinda power?"

_Across the room, the Dog grunted quietly and twitched in Angela's arms, a growl building in its throat. She followed its gaze and saw a black cat detach itself from the shadows across the room. As it stalked arrogantly towards Kate and Nathan, Angela's heart skipped a beat and her flesh ran cold. She let go of the Dog instantly. "Go get it, doggy," she whispered in its ear. "Don'tlet it get to them." The Dog grunted again and vanished into the shadows. Angela rose to her feet and watched intently.  
_  
On the tiles, Nathan dragged himself uprig ht again. "Well all this is nice and all, Katie, but I gotta -" Suddenly furious, Kate squeezed the trigger again and with a sudden smash and crack the wooden seat to his side exploded in a shower of splinters. _Fuck, that was close!_ she thought, almost panicking. Quickly covering, she pretended to be angry again.

"My name... is Kate. _Especially_ to pieces of shit like you."

He raised his hands. "Listen kid, you may have a gun, but you can't have it all your own way, ok? I'll call you what the hell I want!"

She centered the sight on his head and lowered it slowly. "Not if you wanna keep your balls, old man."

"Alright, alright. Ok Kate. It's cool." He lowered his hands slowly and turned to his right, where the gun had slid off. "I'm just gonna get my gun back, ok? I ain't interested in hurting you or nothin', just don't wanna be monster munch, ok?"

She lowered the gun just enough to get the sight off him, still worrying about her trigger slipping, and nodded without taking her eyes off him. "Slowly. I'm watching you."

He turned slowly and reached under the seats, then suddenly stopped and jerked backwards. Kate saw the gun in his hand and raised her own again, then watched in disbelief as a black cat screeched out from under the seat, clawed up his face, and jumped off, closely followed by the Dog. The Dog's weight knocked him off balance, and only Kate saw the two animals run through the door beyond the altar, the door through which Claudia and Alessa had gone. What bothered her about this, though, was that it was still shut tight. A bark and a yowl echoed beyond the door, and she stood staring at it, ignoring Nathan's mumbled complaints. Walking past the scratched and bruised schoolteacher, she stepped up to the door and tried the handle, which rattled in her hand as the lock held tight. Frowning, she slapped it with her hand, testing to see if it were as solid as it looked. It stood impassive, a thick block of wood dressed in cheap white paint.

_Angela began moving up the side of the church, towards the altar and her friend. _

"It ain't gonna hit ya back, ya know?" came Nathan's voice from the aisle behind her.

"Those two," she said slowly, "the cat and the Dog. They were real, right?"

He felt the scratches on his face and winced at the cuts. "Yeah, they were real alright."

"And this door is real, too, and the bars were solid..." She trailed off, staring at the door.

A new voice chimed in, "It's a waste of time, Katie." The two turned to face the speaker, Angela. She moved slowly, keeping control as best she could, and her voice was almost steady. "The other door's locked, too. Sometimes things just don't work for a while," she said, "and you have to wait, or try something else. Or, or, or sometimes, something else has to happen first." A shadow passed over her face as she shut out the memories before they got a chance to take over.

_She's slipping,_ thought Kate, _keep her busy, don't give her time to think_. "Ok then, I guess we wait," she said, "or find out how we get outta here."

Angela had an idea. "Sometimes you've gotta find a key or something."

"So where should we look?" asked Nathan. Angela shook her head, and Kate frowned.

"Lemme guess..." Kate said.

"It's not as easy as that," said Angela with a wry smile.

"Figures," said Kate.

"So what, then? We gotta make a key, unlock a key? What?" asked Nathan.

"Sometimes there's puzzles," said Angela, "things you can't get to unless you've got something else first, or heads to turn, or a picture to finish. You uh... you can't just panic, or run. It doesn't help. Being lost is bad, but being found is worse."

"Alright then," Nathan said. "Let's not get found. If there's a puzzle there's gotta be a clue. No-one sets a puzzle that can't be solved. Let's start looking."

The three broke off and began their search. Kate lifted everything she could find, books, paintings, whatever caught her eye, whilst Nathan crawled on the floor, looking under the seats and behind the tapestries. Angela, however, simply wandered around the church. Nathan kept an eye on her, glancing over repeatedly during his search, which he didn't, to Kate's mind, seem to have much interest in. Catching her eye, he mouthed a question. 'She ok?' Kate frowned, shook her head, telling him in body language, 'Not now'. She held up a hand, he should wait. The answers would come, but she was in no rush to confide in this lunatic unless absolutely necessary.

About half an hour later (if her watch could be trusted in this place) Kate decided it was necessary. Nathan's watching of Angela couldn't be ignored much more, and to let it spook her after all she'd already been through would be bad. Kate walked to Nathan's side and crouched down next to him as he looked up, bringing her face down to his level.

"You keep staring at Angela like that, I'll start to think I can't trust you," she said, calmly and quietly. A friendly little chat, nothing for Angela to worry about. The weight of the gun in Kate's hand was reassuring to her, as was the fact that she had it pointed straight at Nathan's belly. At this range, missing would be impossible.

"Sorry," he said. "I just... I guess I feel bad, ya know? After how I was before to her and all. Just looking at her now, I..." he waved his hands helplessly, appearing almost... remorseful? _What's this?_ thought Kate. _A trick, or something good and real? _She nodded to him to continue, and he tried again. "There was a girl back in Brahms High, where I used to work. She got in trouble. Or, Jeff made trouble for her, and -"

Kate interrupted. "Jeff? That_...thing_ back in the mall?"He nodded, slowly, keeping an eye on the handgun. The prospect of imminent death appeared to focus his mind.

"Yeah, him. He grabbed her after school one night and... well, if I hadn't gotten there in time, it woulda been bad."

Her face softened, and she allowed the gun point to lower. _If he's lying, if I can't trust him, he'll take the weakness and use it. If he's telling the truth, if I can trust him..._

"You stopped him raping her," she said, "And he wanted to pay you back? That why he wanted you so much deader than me?"

He shrugged. "I guess so. That and some other stuff. You know the academic and all."

"So you really did fail him?"

"Yeah, and not just for the studies. He needed to get kicked out, so I... I guess you could say I sabotaged things a little bit."

"Cause of Suzy?"

He flinched, ever so slightly. "Yeah," he said, "cause of Suzy." He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

_That got to him_, thought Kate._ I wonder what happened. Who are you **really**, Mr. Nathan Crawley? What happened back in Brahms? _Those answers would have to wait, she figured, but in the meantime, he could at least be told why Angela was so on edge. The more you know...

"We were in the haunted house," Kate said. "It's haunted alright, but not by puppet ghosts. More like..." Her turn to flail helplessly for words. "...like shadows of people's own evil. Or something, I dunno. Your past catching up to you, or something." She tried to keep a cool face on it, but the images of her own past flashed in her mind as she spoke. The hospital, the smell of burnt flesh. And the man, that _man under the sheet_. She dispelled the memories, tried to focus.

Nathan looked over at Angela and nodded slow agreement.

"Will she be ok?" he asked. "Is there anything I can do?" Kate smiled at him, offering a real smile, possibly the first in weeks. _So he's human after all. We just might make it out of here ok. I guess I get to hope. _

"No," she said, and put her hand on his. "But thanks for asking. The Dog was with her just now. I think she needs time to recover by herself before she can talk, ya know?"

He stiffened. "Can't say I like that mutt much," he said slowly, "but if it helps the kid with... whatever caught up to her, I guess it can't be that bad."

She grinned and pushed at him. "Come on, old man. We gotta get outta here before I start thinking you're a nice guy or something and the world gets even crazier." She got up and walked off, still grinning, and had almost reached the altar, where Angela stood, when she heard the footsteps behind her. She turned to look, and watched as a shadow moved down the aisle. Towards the crouched figure searching the seats, boots clumping as it approached Nathan.

As Kate watched, her heart in her mouth, Nathan spoke. "Forget something, kid?" A black boot came down, just missing his hand. He looked up, and Kate caught her breath as he stared into the outstretched handgun.

"Not quite, Mr. Crawley," said the Dark Man at his side. "I haven't forgotten anything for a very long time now."

**A/N - Ya know, I didn't expect writing 2 stories in tandem would be this tricky. What've I let myself in for? Ah well, no matter. As always, kudos to the excellent Gaia Faye for keeping me from screwing this up too much. Where would I be without you? No, wait, don't answer that. R&R's are, as always, appreciated. **


	19. What's In A Name?

Nathan leapt to his feet, drew his gun from his belt and brandished it frantically at the Dark Man. "You get the hell away from us!" he yelled, "I shot you once and I'll shoot you again!"

"And you think it'll work this time?" Damian asked. "You're very wrong. You shoulda killed me with those shots, but here I am." He spread his arms, waved Nathan away, "You're nothing to worry about, and shooting you would be a waste of ammo. But I see you won't give up chasing the mother of the god, and you keep turning up with the girls, so I guess..."

He turned with a sigh and strode up the aisle to the altar, where the girls had been watching with bated breath. He moved around the altar carefully, glancing at the girls, then back at the tabernacle. Kate noticed, with some surprise, that he made sure to keep it between him and them. _What's this?_ she thought. _Is he... nah, he can't be **afraid** of us. Can he?_

Damian stood where the blonde priestess had stood, his gaze fixed in front of him, not giving the girls another look. With his back to the god in the glass window, he picked up the book of rituals and held it up high, muttering into the air: "Prove you meant it."

Returning the book to the altar, he took a long black knife from his coat, examined it briefly and smiled. The smile dropped suddenly, and he slashed viciously at his forearms, long rivers of blood breaking out from the pale skin. Angela shrieked, and Kate grabbed at her friend's arm, restraining her. "Stay back," he murmured, not taking his eyes from the blood, "this has to be done."

Holding his hands out and over the book, he let the blood run down to his fingertips to drop onto the old yellowing paper. His eyes closed, lips moving in spell or prayer, Damian seemed oblivious to all else. Kate could just make out the words: "The blood of the sinners accepts the Knight's sacrifice."

The air above the book shimmered and crackled.

"The blood of the sinners accepts the Knight's sacrifice."

The Dark Man's hands reddened.

"The blood of the sinners accepts the Knight's sacrifice."

The Dark Man took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and placed his hands on the pages. Flames ripped up suddenly from the open pages, raced up the Dark Man's arms and overtook him. Angela started forward to try to get to him, or put him out or... her mind wasn't clear, but the overwhelming instinct was: _Help him!_ Kate was faster, and yanked her back, struggling, out of the reach of the searing fire. The Dark Man paid neither of them any attention, but continued staring into space and muttering, swaying slightly, but not falling.

He stood, eyes wide open, teeth gritted, a blazing column of fire and darkness. His skin turned red and began to crack and bleed. He swayed, almost fell, and suddenly sirens sounded in the distance. The watchers' vision blurred, and as they lost sight, the Dark Man fell forward onto the altar. Kate's confused perceptions, as her vision faded, seemed to show that he fell _through_ the altar. The air blurred, and everything fell away for Kate and Angela. They fell with it.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Kate fell through darkness, and landed hard on her feet in a row of stolid and blocky wooden pews. She looked around, trying to work out just what the hell had happened. Pews, paintings, another chapel, then. But this one was darker, the air thicker. Once again, she wasn't alone. Across the aisle, she could see Nathan staring dumbly across at herself and... she turned, Angela? The tearful brunette had been dragged along too, it seemed. As Kate turned back to look around again, she saw Claudia and Alessa standing in the church aisle. The three watchers stood in their places and watched the blondes, the woman and the girl, arguing again. Over... Kate craned her neck... a dead body?

Alessa stepped forward, shocked.

"What did you do?" she gasped.

The priestess was calm, dismissive "Oh, nothing important." Kate figured it out from the dagger in Claudia's hand. She had just killed this guy and it was 'nothing important'.

Movement across the aisle caught Kate's attention and, as she watched, Nathan approached the railings separating the pews from the aisle and leant forward to watch more closely, but couldn't seem to lean out beyond the pew tops.

The girl in the aisle spoke, slowly, "You're not going to run? ...I guess this is the end."

"No, the beginning," said Claudia, "As Vincent said: The time has come."

A pause. "Alessa, I'm saddened that you didn't agree to this on your own. But I thank you for nurturing God with all the hate in your heart. It's time for Mankind to be released from the shackles of sin that bind them."

Kate frowned, confused. Shackles of sin? What on earth?

Alessa sounded desperate. "But a God born from hate can never create a perfect paradise!"

"_Happy_ people can be so _cruel_," sneered the woman in black. "Is it so hard to believe that sympathy could be born from pain and suffering?

"Why do you reject God's mercy?" she asked angrily, "Why do you cling to this corrupt world? You know that only God can save us."

Alessa sneered. "And save you too? Happy ending? I'd rather go to Hell."

"No. I don't expect to be saved," said Claudia slowly. "That's fine.

"Alessa, my dearest... For the pain I've caused you, I deserve no mercy. Even if it was to save mankind, it was too deep a sin. It was hubris for me to try to hasten the day of Her arrival. Sacrifices were made, and those are my sins."

The body on the ground gasped, struggling to lift his head. "If you feel so guilty about it, why don't you go to Hell!" He spoke to the girl in front of him, "Heather, use the seal!"

"Vincent?" said Claudia.

The girl reached into her jacket pocket and brought out a white disc with a red seal drawn on it. The priestess recognized it in an instant. "The Seal of Metatron!"

Watching, Kate frowned. Metatron? What the hell kind of name was that? And why would the dying guy want Alessa to use a seal?

"Now your stupid dream is over!" spat the man on the ground.

"Ohhh, that's just a piece of junk," Claudia sighed. "What do you think you can do with that? Do you really think it can kill God? I'm sorry to see you fell for my father's foolishness." She walked around to his side.

_No magic here, then, Kate decided. Whatever the 'seal' was, it must have been pretty useless._

"What?" gasped Vincent.

"You're pathetic," she mocked.

She lunged down suddenly, plunging the dagger into his heart. She stood up again, hands together as though in prayer. "But God loves even you." She turned to the girl. "Now Alessa, there's nowhere else to run."

The blonde girl swayed and staggered with pain. Her skin turned blotchy red, and she screamed out, bent over with pain and clutching at her belly. She collapsed to the floor, the red patches crawling and mingling over her body.

The seal fell from her hands, unheard by any. Unseen, a shadow flickered over it, and was gone. The seal vanished with it.

"Just accept it, Alessa," said the priestess.

Angela hid her face in her hands, whimpering in fright. Kate yelled out for the woman to stop, to leave the girl alone, but the words sounded dead and muffled even to her. Desperate, Kate tried to clamber over the bench in front, but was held back. She hit out at the air in bewilderment and felt her hands thump into something invisible, a barrier of some sort. Trapped! And with no way to help the other girl! She hammered against the barrier, but gave it up as useless. Maybe something about what was happening here would help. Something she was meant to see, perhaps. Alessa writing on the ground? Or maybe Claudia was meant to point something out... Kate forced herself to watch, though she really wanted to hide her eyes as Angela was doing.

Claudia spoke; "The pain will disappear.

"Oh, I've been waiting so long for this." She smiled. "Even as a child I saw the coming of this day. I knew that I would be a witness to it, Judgment Day!" She watched Heather groaning and smiled broadly. As she watched, though, something changed. Alessa's skin turned back to its normal color, the pain seemed to recede from the girl on the floor and she stopped moaning. The priestess gaped. "Alessa?"

Alessa stood up, furious. "Shut your stinking mouth, bitch!" She swayed, put her hand to her heart to steady herself, and drew out a pendant from inside her top. Opening the pendant, she looked at something small and red inside.

"What are you doing?" asked Claudia.

The girl ignored her, turning the red tablet over in her hand "Dad..." she murmured. She screwed up her courage and swallowed the tablet. Immediately her skin turned red again and she fell to the ground. She started to retch, and Claudia looked pleased.

"She's nearly here," she smiled. The smile turned to a frown as she realized something was still wrong. "What is it? Alessa, what have you done? What did you swallow?"

Alessa ignored her, retched harder. With a liquid cough, she brought up what looked to Kate like some kind of massive worm. The bloody fetal creature fell from Alessa's mouth onto the cold floor. She got to her feet and staggered back a few steps as the thing on the ground twitched obscenely.

Kate clapped her hands to her mouth, fighting desperately to keep down the rising bile. Ok .Not bad. A little bit of vomit in the mouth, but no biggy. She swallowed, tried to regain her composure.

"Looks like God didn't make it," Cheryl sneered. Shakily, she walked back up to the thing on the floor, and raised a boot to stomp it.

"Stop!" Claudia cried out.

She rushed forward, faster than Alessa could walk. She pushed the girl back and scrabbled on the ground for the worm, holding it up in her hands. "God is...!"

Alessa was shocked. "Claudia!" she gasped. Claudia tipped the fat, bloody worm into her mouth and began swallowing it herself. Alessa covered her eyes in disgust.

This time Kate couldn't maintain her composure. Turning away, she fell to the floor and retched. In a sudden hot cough, she lost her lunch, a sour and bitter flow splashing onto the tiles before her knees. She clawed her way back to standing, forcing herself to watch the rest of the encounter. Angela, eyes, hidden behind her hands, cringed at the sounds, but made no move to see what was happening.

"Alessa," said Claudia, "you cannot kill God." Her skin began to turn red as Alessa's had. "I will... I will birth God..." she groaned.

"If you can't do it Alessa...

"...I will..."

She stumbled to the head of the room, towards a large oblong hole set into the ground.

There should be an altar there, thought Kate, some kind of place to worship. There's just a hole. What's **down** there?

"Claudia!" cried Alessa. "Claudia!"

But Claudia was too far gone to hear. She reached the oblong hole and stood uncertainly, facing the painting beyond. She swayed and, just as she was beginning to fall, something reached up out of it and dragged her down.  
_  
_Kate couldn't see from where she stood what the thing was, but the suddenness and violence of the priestess's disappearance made her glad of that, when she thought of that later. Seeing it happen, though, all she could do was shriek in horror. The sound bounced back from the unseen barrier, and she lashed out at it, only to find that her hand wasn't forced back. Was she free to move now? She turned to Angela and led the other girl out from among the seats.

The hole at which Claudia had stood was ripped open now, a neat oblong gap mauled and gaping. The girl Alessa wasted no time, but grabbed her pistol from her pocket, checked the load, and jumped down.

Angela and Kate approached the hole, Nathan coming up alongside. All were too fixed on the events below to notice anything else. Kate leant over to look down, Nathan leaning beside her. A hand suddenly landed on both their shoulders and jerked them back, off their feet. Landing on the hard floor, they watched the familiar black shroud pass between them, stopping at the edge of the hole. Damian crouched at the edge and Alessa's voice rose up from the darkness beneath.

"You can't be dead! I was going to kill you!"

A pause, then:

"This is God...?"

An unearthly gurgling scream, followed by the sound of gunfire.

Kate and Nathan began scrambling to their feet, wanting to help the girl, but the Dark Man threw a hand up in a 'stop' gesture, and both man and girl were knocked off their feet and back to the ground.

"This is her fight," he said, not turning, "Whatever happens, it's gotta be her that does it." He leaned forward and watched the battle happening below. They approached again, but slowly, and with no intention to jump down. The aches from the last attempt discouraged that.

The battle did not last long. The thing in the pit may have been a 'god' to its worshippers, but soon it was clear that none of the fire tricks it threw at the girl would help it. When she got in close to beat at it with a sharp Japanese sword, it flailed wildly and too late. Finally it simply fell to the floor, and didn't get up when Alessa came in for the final strike. She kicked at it viciously, as though to settle a grudge. Finally satisfied, she turned, her pocket flashlight highlighting the ring of razor-sharp spikes that had kept her in the arena with the god that failed.

"Is this the end?" she asked the air, lost and bewildered.

"I guess it's time to roll the credits." Her voice cracked slightly and she began to sniffle. "Daad..." she wept. She collapsed to the ground and sobbed. The man in black nodded to himself and watched her. At length, she finished crying, and forced herself to get up. As she began to walk away from the corpse, the Dark Man leant over further, and shoved Nathan into the hole. Toppling himself in, Damian grabbed Angela and Kate on his way. They fell with him to the chamber below, Nathan and Kate landing heavily on the corpse of the god. Damian landed on his feet, and caught Angela as she fell, then set her down on the ground carefully.

Alessa stopped walking and turned suddenly, surprised. She cocked her head, listening, and the watchers heard it too, a whisper just about audible. The air in front of her shimmered and she frowned, readying the handgun again as the shape in front of her got more visible, but not more solid. Alessa didn't seem scared at all, though Kate was feeling distinctly uneasy and Angela was hiding behind her. Cheryl broke into a great smile as she recognized the tall, dark-haired figure in front of her. "Dad! I thought you were..."

The shade in front of her nodded. "I am. But _He_ let me say a last goodbye first. A last favor, maybe, for helping out."

"He?" she asked, confused.

"Metatron, the one Dahlia talked about back then. But nevermind about that now. Heather, my little girl…Or Cheryl, to give you your real name."

_There's that name again,_ thought Kate,_ what the hell is that? The 'seal' didn't do any damn good, so why's he talking like 'Metatron's anything real? Anything important?_

The ghost stepped forward, tried to stroke Cheryl's hair, and shook its head gently when its hand went right through her.

"You always were my little Cheryl, you know that? Not a replacement, not the original, just... my little girl, always loved as though you were my own. Then, and now, and always."

She smiled, a tear leaking down her cheek. "I always was, even when we ran from that bad man, and changed my hair, my name, everything about us. I still remember it. Just about.

"The name you gave me first was the one I kept in my heart, because you gave it to me." Her face screwed up with the effort of not crying, though the tears were flowing out freely now.

Watching this, Kate found her own eyes prickling with tears, and tried not to think about her own father. Much better to think of him as he had been than as she'd last seen him.

"I wanted you to know," said the dead man, "how proud you made me. How much I've always loved you. Even when I feared you were a demon I couldn't believe it completely. You were always so precious, so when you were given to me, I gave you the name of my first daughter. To keep her alive in you, and you alive in me." He began to fade. "I don't have much time left, Cheryl. Promise me you'll remember this. Remember me. Remember that I love you. Always have, always will." His voice sounded more urgent now, with their time coming to a close.

"I'll remember," she choked through her tears. "Dad, stay! You told me you were the strongest man in the world! Don't leave me! Who will... who'll I go to? Who'll look after me now?" She was openly crying now.

He shook his head slowly, "I was, Cheryl," he said, "for as long as I had you, I was the strongest man in the world. I came through Silent Hill and back to find you, and I kept you safe. When _she_ came to find out about you, I wouldn't tell her anything, even when she was killing me."

"Dad!" she wept, as he faded further, "Stay! Please! I need you, Daddy!"

"Goodbye, Cheryl." His voice, calm and sad, hung in the air, his image almost gone. "We'll meet again some time…

"…I'll be watching over you, make me proud."

"Watching over me?" she sniffled. "So you'll be there?" But he had faded completely. "Dad? Dad? What do you mean? How can you leave me? Daaad!"

Kate's eyes ran with her own tears, which went unnoticed, her entire attention was on Cheryl. What could she possibly do now? What 'good' could her father have done with that taunting last goodbye? The bastard. He'd probably never really cared for Cheryl, never really considered her, just abandoned her like that.

Silence echoed. Slowly, accepting it, Cheryl turned to leave, still sniffling. She caught sight of the god at the watchers' feet.

"_You_ did this." she hissed at the dead monstrosity. "You and your damned monsters! Just you hope they don't try anything again to bring you back! I'll find whole new ways to make you suffer for what you've done to us."

She spat at it, and threw her handgun down onto the floor. "So much for you. I was right, you weren't much of a god to be killed by a human."

She straightened up, took a deep breath to calm herself. "I guess I don't need all this anymore." From somewhere in her pockets she took a shotgun, an Uzi, the Japanese sword, and threw them down with the handgun. "You'll rot and ruin, and they'll just rust."

She fingered a taser thoughtfully. "I'll keep these though," she said to herself, "my own things. The stun gun Dad gave me, and the knife that I got to feel tough." She smiled, and laughed a little.

"Feel tough, eh? Yeah, after all this, I don't think I need to worry about all that anymore. Lipstick and pretty smiles and feeling tough. I know who I am now. Who _we_ are, and that'll do just fine."

With that, she turned on her heel, jumped lightly up onto the spikes, disappeared into the shadows, walking out and back into her own life. To whatever she chose to make it.

The watchers remained behind, stood in the darkness, with the dead god under their feet and the heap of used weapons in front of them.

They stood in the darkness, and waited for someone to speak.

**A/N - Gah! I've been trying to get this one right for ages. I'm sure there's still something missing, but since I've not worked it out in all this time, I figure I'm not likely to, so here it is. I hope you all like it. Or, at the very least, don't hate it too much.**


	20. Post Mortem

In the stunned silence, nobody moved. Kate struggled to try to make sense of what had happened, but couldn't. Every time she tried, a flash of a monster or a corpse broke her train of thought. Visions of Claudia forcing the writhing wormlike fetus down her own throat, of the monster that had attacked Angela, of.. of... Her mind whirled with broken images and snatched screams. Was she going crazy? Was this all a dream? No, it was real, had to be real, but then...

She broke the silence, unable to keep the hysteria from her voice: "What... What the _hell_ was all that? What's going on? Where are we? There's not supposed to... why's there a church here? What's this _thing_ we're standing in? AND JUST WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON!"

A hand brushed her shoulder, "Easy, Kate. Take it easy." She whirled round at the touch, gun raised to defend, and found only Nathan trying to calm her down. And the monster at her feet! She gasped and scrambled away, beginning to panic again.

"Just... take a breath, ok?" said Nathan, "I know none of this makes sense, but we gotta keep cool, ok?" He leaned a little closer, lowered his voice, "Besides, you're gonna scare the kid." He nodded towards Angela, sat on the floor between the monster and the weapons, blinking owlishly at the room around her.

Kate lowered the gun again, trying to breathe calmly. Of course he was right, of course he was, but that didn't help her feel any less bewildered, any less lost. Had that thing on the ground just twitched? No! She couldn't think like that, that'd just make it worse. _Easy, Kate_, she told herself,_ just take it... nice and easy_.

Nathan stepped back from her and turned away, leaving her to her thoughts. Kate saw him go past Angela and begin examine the room they were in. Kate heard him tapping the metal spikes with his gun. A high, clear _ting!_ achoed around the room as he rapped steel on steel.. Trying to ignore the sound and the corpse, Kate stepped towards Angela, who had picked Alessa's handgun out of the pile and was examining it thoughtfully.

_ting!_

As Kate approached, Angela looked up at her, her brown eyes seeming huge and deep in the half-light of the cavernous room. "You should keep hold of that, Angela," Kate said, "We don't know what's gonna happen now, and it's sure as hell not been safe around here."

_ting!_

Angela half-smiled. "No. No, it really hasn't." Kate found herself suddenly faced with an awful mental image of what she had seen in the Haunted Mansion of the theme park, and nearly fell to the ground with the shock of it again. That Angela could even _think_ after that attack... let alone walk, talk, and smile... She cut her train of thought off there, she was having a hard enough time staying sane as it was. And was it really safe to tell Angela to keep the weapon? If Angela went off the deep end, she might find that gun looking awful tempting. _No, don't be silly _, she berated herself,_ She's not like that. She's stronger than a suicide. At least, I hope so_.

Speaking to Angela again, Kate said, "Hold on to it, just in case." Angela looked doubtful, and frowned at the gun as she put it away, but did so nevertheless.

_ting!_

"I... I guess you're right." said Angela. "Though, I dunno if I'll be able to use it. This place does things to you, to your mind. Like her..." She pointed at the corpse of the god and Kate turned, puzzled, then gasped as she understood. For the corpse of the god wasn't the only one there. Beyond it, torn open like a bloody puppet, lay Claudia's corpse, her head lolling back grotesquely, entrails exposed to the world.

"Holy shit..." breathed Kate. Approaching Claudia slowly, she stopped suddenly and gagged, trying desperately to hold back the bile in her throat. "What the hell happened to you?" she asked the body. No answer. Probably better that way, she decided.

_ting!_

" 'I will birth God', isn't that what she said?" asked Angela from the ground behind Kate. "Maybe... maybe 'god' wasn't born. Maybe it just burst out, and that's what Alessa... or Cheryl... killed."

Kate turned away, disgusted. "Yeah," she said, muffled as she covered her mouth, "I guess that must be it." She took in the heap of jumbled weapons. "So you're gonna keep the gun, right? Please?"

"I think that's a good idea', said Nathan, returning, "Ya never know what you're gonna run up against in this place. I'll take the Uzi, if you don't mind?" He picked the submachine gun from the pile.

"All yours, just be careful who you shoot with it. Make sure you don't go blasting me by mistake. I'll take the shotgun." Kate bent to pick up the shotgun, feeling her handgun she had tucked into her waistband press into her as she did so. _Now I just need to make sure I shoot before I get eaten_, she thought. _That's the trick, alright._ _Now if I could just make myself believe he could be trusted with that thing... Even after all this, I still can't shake the feeling..._ She shook her head to dislodge the thoughts and straightened up again.

Angela looked around, "What about Damian? He isn't... He'll need something too."

"That guy can take three fucking bullets straight and survive," sneered Nathan, "What's he gotta worry about?"

"I think..." came a slurred voice behind his shoulder, "I'll take the blade." Every movement slowed with pain, Damian leant in past them and grasped the blade. Their attention fixed suddenly on his hand. Blackened and burnt, the skin cracked afresh and bled as he gripped the handle.

"Oh... Oh God..." Kate turned away sharply from the stench of the charred flesh. The corpse had been bad enough, but that kind of living death? She couldn't even imagine living like that, but her mind wouldn't let her ignore the thought of the pain he must feel, his entire body burnt and scorched, every move an agony.

"Relax, Katie," said the Dark Man above her, "It could be worse."

"How?" Nathan murmured, staring past Kate as though mesmerised by the sight of the Dark Man's face, "How in God's name could it be worse?"

"You really don't want to know," returned Damian, and it sounded to Kate as though he was almost laughing, though how anyone could laugh through that... She heard Angela gasp and saw her rise suddenly.

"Damian!" gasped the brunette, "How did you...? What...?"

But her train of thought was broken off. A sound from behind made her turn, and the sight that met them all made them forget even about the Dark Man. Some creature had entered the chamber, soundlessly, and was busying itself about the body of the God. Kate recognized it from her confused sight of the creature that had dragged Claudia to her death, and raised her shotgun. Or attempted to, her hand suddenly felt too heavy to move. The monster, an eyeless, almost faceless humanoid in some kind of massive leather robe, shook the corpse hard in what Kate could only think of as a kid's attempt to wake Mommy up from her long nap. This did not, however, work. Mommy didn't stir. The monster raised its head slowly and watched them stare. Watched them somehow, lacking eyes, but staring at them furiously. Kate felt her blood begin to freeze at the sight of the hatred in every line of the… the _thing's_ face.

It began to walk forward, towards them, moving angrily as though they were to blame. Kate and Nathan raised their guns, but it kept moving.

Angela simply stood by Kate, the gun forgotten in her pocket as she watched the thing approach.

The thing came on, then stopped, as Damian stepped in front of the others, sword raised.

The monster tilted its head, as though considering, then turned back to the God's corpse.

_What the hell?_ thought Kate, _It wouldn't stop with us threatening it, but Damian just stands there and it turns back? ...The fuck? _

Taking a giant arm by the hand, the creature dragged the body as though it weighed nothing more than a broom, and aligned the it to face the wall the God had fallen from. Kneeling next to the massive, misshapen head, the thing reached down to the dead eyes, and a flame kindled where the two bodies met.

The fire raced across the two monsters, consuming them both, and the attendant demon fell dead across its God's body. The flames of the funeral pyre continued, crackling in the unearthly silence.

Nathan shifted on his feet, seeming uncomfortable. Kate followed his gaze to the flames on the ground. The spark had become a flame, and that flame was spreading, slowly and in defiance of all logic, across the sandy ground around the room. They would be burnt alive if they didn't get out right now, she realised, picturing the fire engulfing the room, and she began to panic again.

"Uh... Damian?" she began, " we should probably..."

"Yeah," said Nathan beside her, "we should get outta here. It's hot as hell in here..."

Damian's head snapped up. "What?"

Angela's voice sounded from the ground, dazed and as though dreaming. "You see it too?"

"Ohno..." said Damian, sounding, and Kate would never have believed it if she hadn't heard it herself, afraid, "Nonono..."

_Oh, this really doesn't sound good, _thought Kate. _What's going on here? What's he so worried about?_

"For me," continued Angela, slowly, "It's always like this...

"Damian," she said, rising, "Give me back that knife..."

"No... I, I won't."

"Saving it for yourself?" she sneered at him.

"Angela," he pleaded, "don't do this..."

"For me, it's always like this," she repeated. "Always like this, always like this." She turned to the metal spikes on the wall. "If you didn't take it... I don't know what I might do..." She reached into a pocket, and pulled out, not the gun, but the black blade Damian had cut himself with.

_Ohshit_, thought Kate,_ she musta grabbed it when he caught her. But why? Unless..._

"Angela! No!" screamed Kate. Or was it Nathan? Or Damian? She didn't know, but saw the young woman's motions clearly. Damian ran and tried to stop her, but too slow, too slow. He almost made it, Kate saw as she sank to her knees in despair. Almost. Angela had buried the blade deep into her belly, the fire around the room playing across the ruby blood dripping from her wounds. Black and white, they stood facing each other in the firelight, Damian swaying in the effort of standing, Angela gasping in pain as her life's blood bled away.

Angela looked up at the Dark Man, and Kate saw her smile sadly at him. "I told you, Damian," Angela said. "I told you this town was too wrong. There's..." she broke off, the blood choking her speech, "There's nothing left here now. Just Darkness. Darkness devouring the whole town. And after that...

After that, nothing."

With what looked to Kate like a last effort, Damian drew Angela towards him, embracing her. "No..." he muttered, "no... tenebras...

"Post... post tenebras... lux"

Sirens sounded in the distance, and a white light covered all. Kate saw Nathan throw up his hands, blinded, and begin to fall, before she too lost sight and sound, lost consciousness.

And after that...

**A/N - Real life. Man, don't it just tick you off when it gets in the way of the important stuff? ANYway, here's the latest chapter, hope you liked it. Big thanks, as always, to Gaia Faye for her niggling and pedantic beta-reading, she'll make a decent writer of me yet.**

**Also, belated thanks to DigiSim, whoever you really are, for spotting that mistake of mine a chapter or so ago. That was well done.**

** R&R always appreciated.  
**


	21. Relocation

Cold, so cold.

_Ugh_, thought Kate,_ why's it always gotta be so cold for school mornings?_ She opened her eyes groggily, but could see nothing, only a white haze. She blinked, trying to clear her eyes, but with no effect. A mist in her room? A fog of some kind? Indoors? What the…?

_Wait, hang on, this isn't…_ No bedroom, no alarm clock. Not a school start, then. No, that was it, something about… a church? A girl in a mall, and a guy in the woods? Some kinda Dog, and a man with a knife…

She jolted upright as the memories flooded back. The knife! Angela!

"Angela!" she yelled. "Angela! Damian!" The swirling fog took her words and swallowed them whole. The cold asphalt beneath her folded legs told her she had woken up outside on a street. But then what had happened to the church? That couldn't all have been a dream. Could it? She tried yelling again:

"Hello? Anyone? Help!"

Nothing but nothing. As far as the eye could see. _Not that that's all that far,_ she thought, and was suddenly saddened by the idea. _Nothing but nothing, and just me stuck in it. This shouldn't be. I had **plans**, man! Shit to do! There was Tommy, and the party, and getting even with Jenni, that bitch..._ She struggled to her feet, beginning to really feel the chill on her bare legs and arms now, and turned slowly, trying to see something to give her an idea of where she was.

_How long've I been out here, anyway? Is there anyone else here, I wonder?_

She checked her watch, but found no help there either. _Musta lost it back…_ she turned, at a loss again, _back… there. Or there, or somewhere… Fuck!_

No buildings nearby, not so much as a street sign. Just a long road stretching away in either direction, lined with trees, beyond which…. The fog obscured everything. She patted her pockets, checking what she had. The guns from before, a twinge in her side at the memory of the broken metal spar that she'd fallen on at the mall. So, a scar, two guns, and a few health drinks. Not much comfort there, but some definite certainty. And… a memory of… falling spikes in a ceiling. No, a falling ceiling with spikes.

_I died. I know I died. And then… then I was back, next to that weird red paper. What the hell _was_ that all about?_

The red paper. That had happened, what, twice? Once on that freaky train, and then again just before she… Before she had…

_Died. Dear God, I died. And then I came back, but _how

The red paper must have had something to do with it, she figured. Some kind of… something _magical_? Or something like that? She had never believed in magic. All that fairy-story crap was for kids who believed in monsters and ghouls, the dead coming back to life, and ghost stories. _You'd best start believing in ghost stories, Miss Morgan!_ she thought to herself, _you're _in_ one!_ She started to laugh gently, and before she could stop herself she collapsed in hysterics, laughing and sobbing frantically. _Now I just need some rum and I'm set!_ she thought, _that'd do it just fine! Oh GOD I'm gonna DIE out here! Or I'm crazy, or dreaming or…_

_No. I'm not dreaming. And I'm not crazy. At least, I don't think so. _

She rapped against the ground beneath her. Hard. Her knuckles yelled pain back at her. No dream, then. And the world around was pretty constant. If this was a delusion, it was a pretty persistent one. Too persistent to be craziness. And the others she'd met, they seemed more or less normal. Well, more or less _real_, if not normal, she amended, remembering the overgrown bat that Damian reminded her of. No, this was real alright. She was sane, it was just the rest of the world that had gone screwy, and her memories, such as they were, were proved by the evidence.

_Wherever I am, what happened definitely happened. Got the scars and guns to prove it. Best get someplace else. _

She began walking, then stopped suddenly as doubt struck her.

_Where _am_ I? I guess this _could_ be the road between the amusement park and the town… Or it could be just about any other damn road on earth… Where _is_ everyone? At least when I was with Angela, I didn't feel so alone…_

_Keep moving, Katie, keep moving…_

But what if that was the wrong way? What if that took her back? Or away from… From…

_Where _was_ I going? I had… I had a plan… I think._

Slowly, thoughts crawling back into the light of her mind, she remembered.

_Home! I was going home! They'll be missing me. Mom, and Dad. Well, maybe not Dad. Dunno if he even…_

She turned around sharply, a change of direction and of thought, tried to concentrate on walking. What her dad thought of her or where he was right now could wait. For now getting home was what mattered. And if she walked far enough in a direction, any direction, she was bound to get _somewhere_.

_Fabulous,_ she thought,_ I always wanted to be somebody somewhere special. Guess I should have thought twice before wanting that. Should've included a friend to be with me, too, huh?_

With a deep sigh, she started walking again. Whichever way she went, she was certain to get _somewhere_ eventually.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Being lost is like trying to find that one puzzle piece which makes the whole thing sensible. A piece which, though it won't fix everything for you, at least makes the problem solvable. A corner, an edge, a cloud in the sky. But here there were no clouds, unless walking in fog was walking in clouds, no corners, no edges. Just endless fog. And looming ahead, a dark shape of a man.

_Oh, that had better be a man, or at least human…_ Kate thought, mouth suddenly dry, _running along here all by myself is just _too_ creepy._ The shotgun in her hand felt heavy now, the grip slick with her perspiration, hands cold and clammy.

_Do I stop? Run away again?_ The shotgun still had cartridges, she knew. She had checked it on picking it up, a basic knowledge of guns was something Da… her dad had taught her.

_Shutup thinking about that already. Here and now, we've got... something up there. What to do?_

She stopped, knelt down and held the shotgun butt to her shoulder, aiming in the general direction. _On or back? If it's a friend, then letting him go on and leave me behind could get me killed. But if it's not…? Deep breaths Katie, remember what Crawley said, take it easy…_

The gun against her shoulder was a reassuring weight.

"_When you're scared, prayer is good, faith is great, but a barrel-full of bang is best." Thanks, Dad._

She grinned and rose quietly, moving as quietly and gently as possible towards the figure just about visible in the fog. It stood as though waiting, watching. Or just lost.

As she approached, she saw it was a man. Or looked like one from the back, anyway. She still remembered the 'security guard', and shuddered at the memory of the thing's face.

"Alright," she began, aiming the gun at the figure's back, "Stay still and lemme see ya…"

"Let me guess," said the man in front of her, "we're gonna have a little chat?" As Kate gasped, and her jaw dropped, he turned around, grinning. "You're really going to have to think of a new threat, kiddo."

"Nathan!" she rushed forward and nearly knocked him over with a hug. "You're alive! You're ok! Uhm… I mean…" She let go, suddenly very conscious of herself and the situation. "It's good to see you, uh… That is…"

He grinned again. "Yeah, yeah, you're overwhelmed with joy, I can see that. Hey, you got something in your eye, kid." He turned as she rubbed the tears from her eyes.

_Something in my eye, yeah right,_ she thought, furiously grateful, _You wonderful bastard, but am I glad to see you_.

"Where've you been?" he asked anxiously, "When the sirens sounded I saw you pass out too, and thought I heard you when I woke up on the street, but then I couldn't find you."

"I… I guess I got lost." she admitted. "In my home town, too. If this _is_ Silent Hill. I… I dunno where we are, I can't see anything I recognise…" She trailed off, embarrassed and lost.

"Well, I was just looking at the road signs," said Nathan, "and _they_ say we're at the corner of Bachman…" he pointed behind him, "and Bradbury…" pointing off to his right.

"Bradbury!" she yelled. "Then we're almost there! I'm almost home!" Without another word, she took off, leaving Nathan behind, her bare skin twinkling in the ghostlight of the fog. Reaching Bradbury came as a shock, though. It wasn't there to be reached. Boots scrabbling desperately against the asphalt, she flung out an arm, just grabbing a streetlamp to avoid falling down, tumbling into the… The what? She peered ahead carefully, not relaxing her grip on the iron for even a second.

'_Road out'_, she thought dizzily. The road was not just out, but completely ruined. A gaping hole fell away at her feet, and she had to back away slowly before the vertigo took her down, too. But her feet wouldn't move, they felt leaden, stuck to the ground. She started to sway, her vision began to blacken, and she felt herself begin to fall forward.

Suddenly she was jerked back, a strong arm wrapped around her, and she felt herself being picked up and carried backwards several feet before being dumped, bemused, on her own feet again.

"I woulda warned you…" Nathan panted, letting her down again, "half the freaking roads are out, and those that aren't…" he waved his new Uzi vaguely, "well, I ain't _seen_ anything yet, but I sure as hell heard something. We're not alone, and it's not good news for us."

She gulped, those demon dogs outside the mall, could they be here too? No reason for them not to be…

"We can go by… uhm… hang on, I found a map, somewhere…" he pulled a tourist map out of his pocket to check, and grabbed for a piece of paper as it fell out, jolted by the unfolding. "What the hell? Looks like an old scrap of diary or something, goin' by the date on it. Hmmn…"

He held the ragged scrap carefully, squinting to make out the handwriting. "Looks like:

'_Jan 9th. I think…_

_Finally made it back. Can't think how they didn't catch me on the way in, they must have known I'd head back home. Or maybe even _they_ can't believe anyone could be that stupid. Something's changed, though. Place is empty. I'll keep this journal, just in case I need to look back on what I find. Should be ok, though, just lie up for a few days, lick my wounds, then maybe skip the country. Need to get to the hospital first, though. Alchemilla's close by, maybe I can find a nice nurse to help me.'_

It stops there," he said, tucking the scrap into a pocket, "Weird, like someone was trying to keep a journal of all this… this stuff. What's Alchemilla, anyway?"

"Local hospital," Kate said, "Just across the bridge a ways over there. It's been around since the town began, but there was a big bust-up about some drug ring and some nurses went missing. I dunno what, but that place always gives me the creeps." She made sure not to add that the last time she'd been there had been with her dad, and that had been worst of all. She never wanted to go through all that again.

Shuddering, she changed the subject. _Play dumb, get him talking, make something happen, anything, just don't _think_ about all that!_

"So what's your map say? How can we get to Levine Street?"

"Lessee now… Midwich leads to Matheson leads to Levine Street. Sort of. What's in Levine Street anyway?"

"Home." she said, very quietly.

"What's that?"

"Home! I wanna go home!" she snapped, her temper flaring, then instantly regretted it. He looked like he'd just been slapped, and no wonder. "I'm sorry," she sighed, burying her hands in her hair, "I just… all this is getting to me, and I can't remember when I last slept, or ate, or… anything other than running away or shooting or looking for Ange- HOLY SHIT, ANGELA!" She gaped at him in sudden horror. "Where's Angela? What… what happened to her? Where's she? If you woke up near me, then where'd she go? And Damian?"

Nathan shrugged helplessly. "You got me, kid, but the way I see it, they've gotta be someplace better than we are. He can take bullets and live, and burn and still walk, and since she's with him…"

"No, you're wrong!" Kate sobbed, "He didn't take the bullets, you just shot some damn flask he was carrying! The other one I had to dig out, and that damn near broke him with pain! And Angela… Ohmygod, Angela! If you had seen what happened to her…"

"The Haunted House you said about?"

"Yeah, that place… Oh God…!"

"Look," he said, suddenly stern, "we can't help them, whatever happened to them. And I'm **damn sure** that black-wearing bastard aint done for yet, whatever you saw. He's still got shit to mess up for… Well, someone. Best we can do is stay alive and look out for ourselves."

"Ok. I guess that makes sense." she turned in the direction of Midwich street, then froze. "But you gotta promise me something, Nathan, ok?"

"Sure, kid, what's that?"

"Whatever you see, whatever you hear, _stay away from the school_. Jeff told me there was something up there, in this… this place…"

"Yeah, but Jeff was-"

"I know what he was!" she cut him off, "I know what he was, you told me what he did. But he didn't lie, did he?"

"No," said Nathan bitterly, "he didn't lie. He was having too much fun with the truth."

"So you'll stay out? It seemed like even _he_ was scared of the place."

"Ok, I'll stay out."

"No matter what?" she pressed. Men! They always said one thing and then did another, you had to make sure. "You promise you won't go in, no matter what?"

"I promise," he sighed, "No matter what."

_Sure,_ she thought,_ you _say_ you'll stay out…_

"Ok," she said aloud," Let's get outta here. This fog gives me the creeps."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

And as the two trailseekers moved off into the fog, trying to find a way home, a dark figure drenched in blood and soot stepped outside of a hospital room, smoke gently rising from his skin and clothing, and began down a corridor. He could see he was not alone, could hear the voices of others, others he'd really rather not meet. He tightened his grip on the handle of his weapon as his heart started to race.

Miserable and cold, he grumbled to himself as he headed for the elevator.

"I _hate_ hospitals."


	22. Going Home Again

"Didn't we just come this way?"

"Yeah, I know, but we gotta backtrack to get to Midwich. Bradbury didn't give out until the corner of Bradbury and Levine."

"When we get to Midwich, we just go straight past the school, ok? Straight past. No detours."

"I know, I know. Christ, Kate, you think I'm deaf?"

_No_, she thought,_ I think you're a man, and just don't listen to girls._ Aloud she said, "Just checking we're both on the same page here."

"Yeah, no problem. Same page, same paragraph. Chapter twenty-two, line whatever, 'As Kate and Nathan approached the school...' yadda-yadda. Trust me, kid, I got it."

"I hope so."

They walked on in silence, passing broken-down signposts, and knocked-over garbage cans. A smashed in store front with its goods littered across the sales floor, the storefront poseables all missing their heads, except for one which stared blindly through the gaping hole in the glass. A whole lot of people had left in a hurry, by the look of it. Kate looked away, then jerked her head back round as movement caught her eye. A scrap of poster, nothing important. She started to relax, then frowned as she realized something was missing. An absence was missing, the storefront glass had been somehow restored, the staring mannequin had lost its head. _There was a **hole** there._ she thought, _It's gone now._ Shaking her head, she picked up her pace, tightened her grip on her shotgun. She was suddenly very keen to be away from there, and said nothing to Nathan. He would want to investigate, just like he had in the throne room of the 'God', and that would only keep them there longer. No, the sooner they were out of there, the better.

As Kate and Nathan approached the school, a sense of foreboding grew in Kate's heart. Jeff had been a lot of things, but he hadn't lied. And wherever he was now, his warning still sounded loud and clear; stay well clear of the school. But somehow she didn't think it would be all that easy. The lawns and hedges were in sight now, a small side sidewalk went off to some sewer entrance. She could just make out the gate to the sewer entrance hanging open. Some idiot vandal had smashed off the lock and chain years ago and it seemed like the school board had never gotten round to replacing it. Wordlessly, she took Nathan's arm above the elbow and began to steer him round the corner. He grunted absent-mindedly, but allowed himself to be tugged along. His Uzi hung limply from his hand, her own shotgun held tight as her heart hammered.

_Come on,_ she thought,_ just a little further and we're outta here. Almost there…_

No. Of course, it couldn't be that easy. Nathan suddenly stiffened, then stopped completely. Kate felt the muscles in his arm freeze up under her hand, his feet scuffing to a dead stop. His head slowly turned, his gaze drawn to the skulking red-brick building across the street from them. Kate could just imagine the compulsion forcing him to turn and stare, it was all she could do not to stare herself, but keep her eyes fixed on the road ahead. But then she had to give in, had to follow his view as he whispered, "Lisa…" He started to walk, step by shuffling step, and her hand on his arm might have been just so much dry paper trying to stop a flood. Giving up on trying to haul him back, she ran around to face him from the front, backpedaling frantically as she flapped her hands, trying to wave him away. No good, and they were almost on the path up to the school. Frustrated now, she finally lost her temper.

"Nathan!" A sharp _smack!_ as she clipped him hard across the face with her open palm. He blinked and staggered back, shocked out of his trance.

"K- Kate? Did you see? Did you see her? I saw her in the school! She was at the windows!"

"Who? Who was in the school? The windows are empty, dark. Look for yourself!" She pointed frantically.

"Y-yeah, I see. They're empty. _Now_. But she _was there_, Kate!"

"Who? Who was there?"

"Lisa. Lisa, my wife…"

"Your _what_?"

"Yeah, you heard." He shrugged helplessly. "I guess I don't act like a married man should, huh? Well, hell, I… it's not like you go through surgery or anything to make you the perfect married man, ya know?"

Yeah, it made sense now she thought about it. A married man was just a man with a gold ring. Or not. She noticed that his hands were bare of jewelry.

"Married and no ring?" she asked dubiously.

He shifted unhappily, "Yeah, well, ya know… jewelry's for chicks and fags. Not my thing. But look, she was – Ah! There she is! Look!"

Kate spun on her heel. Nothing moved. The school stood bleak and empty, its windows dark and bottomless eyes, its doors a mute mouth. Nothing moved. Nothing stood in the windows. Nothing there.

"Ah shit, she moves too fast. Look, I know what he said, but…" He paced anxiously, then seemed to come to a decision. "Dammit I can't just leave her there!"

"If you go in there, you're going in _alone_, pal. I stuck with ya back there in the mall, but this…"

"The mall! I saw her there, too! Well, on the way there. Remember we got separated? I was… I went…"

"Sure. You went chasing after your wife who _might _not have _been _there, and then-"

"Wait, how do you know she might not have been there?"

"You weren't expecting anyone but me, I know it, and you sure as hell weren't expecting to see her. Remember, you followed me through the woods? You've been seeing things, man"

"No, I was- I was out for a walk in the – "

"Can it. I saw the way you looked at me." His face fell suddenly, and she relented. But only slightly. This guy had stalked her through there, almost gotten her killed, and now wanted her to go through that school? Hell no. "Look, I know what you were after, and I guess I can understand how a guy might get… distracted by other girls." Her hand went to her hip as she said this, the posture feeling so familiar. And why not? She'd used it probably hundreds of times to get what she wanted from a guy. They'd do anything if they thought you'd give what _they_ wanted, and this one could be useful. Big gun, bigger body to block those _things_, and there'd be more of them, she could feel it. They were back in town, but no way out of the woods yet. No, she needed this one along if she could. Begging wouldn't work, though, nor would demands.

"Look…" she wheedled, shifting sinuously. A subtle change here, a small adjustment there… "I can understand the distraction and all, but how your wife could be here, in this place? Did she even come to town with you? You sure as hell never said anything about her." The movements came so naturally, chest out, lips in a slight pout. "Wouldn't it be so much better to come with me? At least _I_ know where I'm going. We'd be safe at my place, and there's food, and drink. A nice soft sofa where we can just…" she twirled some strands of hair, faking absent-mindedness, "…just relax, you know? And don't you deserve some relaxation? Some down-time after all that exertion? Wouldn't that be _so much nicer_ than chasing someone who isn't there?"

He gaped at the newly-revealed flesh her adjustments laid bare, but rallied and tried to answer. "No, she's… she's back at, uhm, back at home." He paused to collect his thoughts, and maybe, she guessed, to fight against the ones she'd planted. "We had a bit of, I guess you could say we had a fight – An argument! I mean we argued, don't look so freaked." He held up his hands placatingly, though she hadn't moved a muscle. "It's not like I'm some wife-beating psycho or something, stay cool. And I… I miss her. Coming out here was a mistake. I shoulda… I dunno, stayed and talked, or _something_. But she's there! Right in that school! And if Jeff was telling the truth -"

"We've been _over_ this, old man, he was _telling the truth_. So stay _out_. You're just seeing things."

"Alright, fine, so he was telling the truth, doesn't that mean it's even more important I get in there and help her?"

_This isn't working_, she thought. _Alright then, let's try something else… _"Fine, you do your thing!" She pouted angrily, gestured violently. "Stay here and chase shadows or go in _there_ and get killed! _I'm_ going home, and if you had _any_ sense, if you _cared_ at _all_, you'd come too..." and she stalked off. But not too fast.

"Kate, wait!" he yelled. She turned slowly letting a little cautious hope into her expression. "You... you take care, Katie," he said desperately. "Really, don't take any chances, I'd hate for you to get hurt."

She could hear his concern. A genuine concern. _Call me Katie, wouldja? Alright, I'll let that slide. This time_. _Let's see now…_

She waved at him, granted him a brief smile, and sauntered off into the fog, hips swinging. _If a little 'distraction' can keep him following me through the whole fucking wood, maybe it can keep him outta that school. And I could do with that Uzi near me_._ Come on, Nathan, you know what's good for ya._ For a moment she thought she could _feel_ him watching her long lithe legs, her short skirt, her golden hair. _Keep walking, Katie. If you turn back, you'll wind up going into that school with him, and no chance of _him_ coming with _you_. Whatever all that Midwich stuff's about, it's someone else's problem._

But he would not follow, didn't move, and Kate walked alone into the fog.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Midwich Street stretched cold and empty in front of her and she almost regretted her decision. Almost. A place which could scare even scum like Jeff was somewhere she really didn't want to be. Even so… the silence was beginning to get to her.

Memory map, memory map. Matheson was the second right on Midwich, then pass the back alley for the garbage, and Levine street was the first left. _Almost there. Almost there. Just… stay cool, Kate_. A sudden twinge of guilt for leaving Nathan behind was quickly smothered. No time for that, and anyway he'd made that choice himself. Looking for a wife who wasn't there, almost certainly _couldn't_ be there was just _insane_, and looking out for crazies wasn't her thing.

As she passed the garbage alley, the road became rougher, as though the asphalt had been broken and then put together again by some massive bulldozer. A scrap of paper trapped by rubble caught her eye and as she bent to pick it up the fog stirred in a breeze, the gravel behind her stirring gently in the wind. Straightening again, she read the text aloud: " 'Dog house Levin Street.' What the…. hell?" The only house in Levin street with a dog house was… was her house. What the hell was going on? Someone was after her house? Who? And why! But that would… She looked back to the note and saw to her bewilderment that the text was fading. As she watched, the paper became completely blank, with no hint of the old text. Scrunching it up, she shrugged and turned to toss it into the rubble behind her. Which had vanished. In its place, a gaping hole now fell away at her feet. She turned away sharply, with no-one to catch her this time, she couldn't risk fainting again. Lying where the old scrap had been, she could see more pages. She bent to pick them up, the 'Dog House' note fluttering to the ground. As she picked them up, she caught sight of the void behind her, and swayed. _Home, now!_ she thought, _I can read these later!_ Straightening again, she ran up the last stretch of Matheson, to turn left onto Levine street.

Levine street was not so empty as she had hoped, the radio in her pocket began its static hiss, and a faint growling sounded around her.

_Shit!_ She broke into a run, shotgun held tight, and ran as fast as she could towards her home. Outrunning them proved easy, far easier than she'd thought, and she reached the door safely. No keys, though. _Oh, come on!_ she thought furiously, _All that shit and now I can't get in cause I forgot my keys? Ok, stay calm, there's a spare in the doghouse. I wonder if whoever wrote that note knew..._ A quick rummage in the roof of the doghouse resulted in the spare set, and she reached the door again just as a dog's figure became visible in the fog. Her hands began to shake. _Hurry up, hurry up!_

Falling through the doorway as the animal began to speed up, she slammed the door shut in its face, bracing herself against the wood as the thing slammed against it. Fumbling with the keys, she locked up tight, and stumbled along the short hallway, past the basement door, and into the dining room. The red paper on the table filled her with relief as she flopped into a seat at the table. Going by last time she had seen one of these, she should be safe. The last time she'd seen one, though, had been just before... just before the time she had… _died, yes, I died, and then I came back right in front of one of these. So there's something bad up ahead? Maybe, but the one on the train wasn't before something real dangerous. Still, best to be safe. Then I can go upstairs, get some sleep before going on. I don't really wanna go past the basement to get to bed, though. Why don't I want to go past the basement? That's weird, it's never bothered me before…_

She stretched out to the paper, feeling the pull on her mind begin again. No visions this time, just a feeling of rummaging, like something was getting into her mind and rearranging things. Even as the red tide in her mind arose from the paper, taking her consciousness, the question nagged. Why did the basement door suddenly bother her? And just before she blacked out, the answer arose, _ex nihilo_, as from nothing.

_Because we don't have a basement._


	23. Basement Traxx

This time the Red Paper gave no images, no visions. Just the darkness flashing through her mind and deep into her body, stretching out and filling her up from inside. Then vanishing completely as sight returned with consciousness. How much time had passed she couldn't even guess. A feeling of having slept, but not enough, made her drowsy. She wanted to get up and go to bed, to rest, but couldn't face going past that horrible door to go up to her bedroom. She'd have to turn her back on it to open the 'real' door to the upstairs. _Probably better to check the rest of the first floor first_, she figured.

Uneasy now, with that sickening fear beginning again in her belly, she rose from the chair and went into the kitchen. Checking, checking, and checking again over her shoulder, half expecting the door to creak open behind her, opening into - into what?

Nothing. She made it to the refrigerator without problems. Nothing much there, and somehow she wasn't hungry, though it had been at least a day since her last meal. A few health drinks had appeared on the counter top, though, and instead of the one first-aid kit her parents always kept by the knife block, three stood on top of each other. _Weird_, thought the girl, _but what's been **normal** lately anyway?_

Stuffing the kits in to her backpack seemed good, so she did it, and turned back to the main room. The dining room, with its new old door. That door shouldn't be there, she knew, it hadn't been there when she had left the house that morning. Or... _It was this morning, wasn't it?_ She tried to remember, but couldn't manage. There had been no sunset or sunrise, but it felt like so much longer than a few hours since she had left. Must have been that morning, so that door must be new.

But it looked old, like it had always been there. Felt old, too, like something she knew and had grown up with. Knew and somehow feared. Bracing herself, she walked past it, opened the door to the stairs that would take her up to the bedrooms, and stopped cold as the door behind her clicked. She turned to face it and saw it swing open silently, opening into a dark stairwell. The darkness drew her in, calling her to find the reason for the new door, and maybe even the reason for all other mysteries so far. Nothing made sense, and this door was the strangest. Maybe behind a door that shouldn't be there, she could find answers to things that shouldn't exist. A pull emanated from beyond the woodwork, a call to enter. She went through the doorway obediently, and though she screamed when the door slammed shut behind her, she wasn't surprised. Not really.

The stairs down were metal, grated and railed, and rang out with every step her boots took. Gun at the ready again, she continued down. The stairs turned, now sharply to the right, now turning into a platform leading off to the left, and now another set of steps to the right. Deeper and deeper, and the echoes grated more and more on her nerves.

After what felt like an hour's descent, she paused for breath, and tried to take in her surroundings. She turned from the steps ahead, leading down again, and stood facing outward from the railing. But saw nothing. The darkness stretched off in every direction, no light aside from her flashlight's glow. Just this hanging platform and the few steps above and below were visible in the flashlight's beam. The air was cold and still, raising goosebumps on her exposed legs and arms. Beginning to panic now, she thought about going back, but couldn't stand the thought of turning her back on the stairs down. If something followed her back up... No, she couldn't do that.

A deep breath, and she held her hand over her heart, trying to force its thumping beat to a calmer pace. _I can do this_, she told herself, _I know I can. I can do anything I put my mind to, and this looks like a pretty good gun, too. I can do this_. Turning, she stepped onto the downward stairs and resumed the descent.

Flight after flight of stairs. Platforms leading left or right, then more steps. Terror would just be giving way to exhaustion and near tedium when an echo of a footstep would be flung back at her, and she would feel the fear again; fresh and cold and fierce. Gripping the shotgun tightly, she made her slow, dizzying way down in the dark.

Finally the steps ended, and she found herself on sanded ground. Alone and lost in the dark of a space that shouldn't be. She scanned the room. Nothing useful. Wrenches around the room, all lined up in a large circle, handles pointing inwards . No use to what she would have to face outside in the town. No use at all now the roads had fallen in. Even if she fixed a car there was no way out. _Even if I wanted to leave_, she thought, _but where would I go? This is home, this is where I wanted to get to since all this started, so where would I go?_

Beyond the wrenches stood flaming torches, six in a wide circle around the wrenches, shining just enough to make the whole place that much gloomier. She paced the room, and fidgeted with her shotgun. In the growing unease, she felt comforted by the heft and presence of the long thick barrel. _Whatever's down here_, she thought, _I'm ready. The answer's gotta be down here. Time to finish this._

As her eyes adjusted to the light, she could make out something more in the room, just beyond the ring of tools. A hospital gurney, batterered and bloodied, stood across from the steps. She approached it slowly, gun ready, but when she saw who lay on it, she forgot all about the gun and ran across the sanded ground to the gurney. "Daddy!" she yelled out. "Daddy, what're you doing here?" The figure rolled slowly on the mattress, turning toward her, but made no answer. As Kate slowed down, about to cross the ring of wrenches to reach the bed, an answering sound came from behind her. A loud banging, like someone beating on a door.

Turning back, she saw just that; a new door standing alone in the center of the room. It creaked open and she raised her gun, taking careful aim. A shambling figure came through the door, tall and hunched. No one she'd seen before, a dark shape in shabby trousers and shapeless jacket, its blonde hair overhanging its face. But she recognized what it was carrying. An oversize wrench held in a double-handed grip swung slowly from side to side as the thing lurched into the room. The door fell to the ground behind it, and the thing turned towards the bed beyond the circle. Kate went to step back, but couldn't. Some kind of resistance kept her from moving beyond the ring of wrenches. _Damn_, she thought, _just like that church again_. She stepped forward instead, pumping the chamber of the shotgun.

"I don't know who you are, or what you want," she growled, "but you better stay the hell away from my daddy!" With the last word, she squeezed the trigger hard and watched in satisfaction as the thing reeled back and fell over, blood-spatter hair plastered thickly across its face. The recoil had left Kate too breathless to say anything, but the triumph burned within her nonetheless. She came closer to the fallen monster and blasted another shell into its reddened chest, watching the blood ooze out into the sand. It twitched once, then stopped moving. Satisfied, the girl turned back to her father's bed and approached it slowly, the inner tumult of fear and love making each step a trembling pilgrimage.

"Daddy? Is that you? When did they let you come home?" She stopped, her heart racing, drumming against her slender ribs. He had been gone so long, how could it be that no-one had told her he had come back? It's almost too good to be true, she thought, and stopped dead. What if it...? No, it had to be true! It had to be! No-one could be that cruel. She resumed her approach, but so slowly, each step an effort to restrain her fears of disappointment.

The thing on the ground made no sound behind her as it swung the wrench into the back of her legs, smashing her to the ground. Screaming in pain, she rolled and scrabbled with her gun. The thing stood and approached her. It aimed a short, shuffling kick at her prone body, and she fired again as it brought a booted foot crashing into her gut. For such a strange, short kick, it packed a hell of a punch, making her cringe as she yelled out in pain again. It kicked, made contact and she fired into it. The thing made no response to the buckshot burying itself in its tissue, but kicked again. In desperation, Kate fired into it again, and again, until the gun clicked dry and all that was left was to curl up and try to block the kicks with the gun barrel. Suddenly uninterested now, the figure shuffled around, wrench swinging, and approached the hospital gurney. Exhausted with pain and fatigue, unable to rise on her damaged legs, Kate could only manage a despairing groan as she saw the thing raise its terrible weapon and bring it smashing down. With the impact came darkness, and Kate passed out.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

She woke to a feeling of being pulled. Kate blinked slowly as she opened her eyes, her whole body feeling sapped of energy. All she knew was a feeling that time passed, though how much she couldn't guess. Strong hands had gripped her ankles, and the sand grated under her as she was dragged across the floor, rolling her skirt up underneath her and rubbing against her skin. Her arms dragged behind, and her top rode up against the sand and grit, nothing shielding her bare skin from the darkness and chill. Exposed and vulnerable, she tried to struggle, to at least bring her arms down, to cover herself just a bit, but they were so light, and the air was so heavy. Why was her mouth so dry? The night should have refreshed her for ages still. Those beetles in her hair were all wrong, too, she had specifically asked for purple worms, but they just wouldn't stay still. He was watching her, too, she could see his eyes beyond his hands, burning invisible in the dark. Why wouldn't they stop singing and let her sleep? The air was crying again, she needed her scissors but they wouldn't let her take the head off and it just wasn't fair. She wanted to shout at him to let her sleep, but he kept dragging her and the sand was getting nasty and sharp and real personal now. She would kick him, that's what she'd do, that'd teach him to mess with daddy's little girl. But her feet were tangled in the seaweed again and the fish were watching her, sniggering. They knew she was being taken away, she had been a bad girl, she deserved it. His grip didn't lessen, the sand grated, and she felt herself still being dragged across the gritty ground.

Still too weak to even protest, she moaned quietly. With her eyes only half open she saw blurred impressions, a man holding her feet, the stairs approaching, darkness all around. The man dragging her stopped, reached down to grasp her legs at the thighs and pulled again, lifting her more off the ground. His hands were hot, dry, and his palms felt so rough against her soft skin, so smooth and hot against her cool flesh. Cold metal under her shoulders now, the steps hard under her back and head. Darkness again.

Now they were on the stairs, and he was letting her slump to the metal platform. He bent down and grabbed her thigh with one hand, her waist with the other, and picked her off the metal entirely. Slung over his shoulder, her arms dangled limply, and she saw the pale gold color of her wristwatch twinkle in the darkness before her sight faded again.

Back in the house now, and she was slung lower against his body; half-seated on his arm, her head nestled against his neck. With her eyes half open, she could see the door swinging shut behind them.

She blinked slowly, and when she looked again it was gone, replaced by bare wall. Another blink, and they were in a bedroom. Her bedroom. She was pitched backwards, off his shoulder, and fell with no strength to hang on. Her eyes closed defensively, and it felt as though she was falling into nothing. The darkness came, and she passed out again.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

She awoke under covers, duvet and sheets soft and warm on her skin. She rolled and nuzzled the pillow, luxurious in the comfort and reassurance of another morning waking in her own bed, under her own covers. Then the memory hit her and she jerked upright. The door, her father on the gurney, that... that thing, and being carried back here. All a dream? She held out her hands in front of her eyes, searching for some clue, and saw her fingers blackened with blood and gunshot powder. No dream.

In the hallway outside, footsteps approached the doorway. She froze, then lay back down as quick as she could. Whoever had left her here hadn't bothered to keep her from injury, or her head wouldn't hurt from those steps, but it didn't seem like she was wanted dead, either. If she faked sleep, she could figure out her next move, get the edge on the situation.

The door opened quietly, and soft footsteps approached the bed. She stayed still , and made no reaction when a girl's voice whispered her name. No reaction at all was hard, when she recognized the voice. Angela! But she had to be dead, after cutting herself like that. It had to be a trick. Kate stayed still, and waited until the speaker gave up. As the footsteps went away from the bed, Kate opened her eyes halfway, trying to sneak a peek at who it really was. A white sweater, red pants, and dark hair. The girl turned on her way to the door, and Kate could see the face. No doubt, that was Angela. Then she was gone, leaving Kate alone. She sat up again, tried to take stock. The room was ordered, as it had been when she left. Everything tucked away into dressers and drawers. Well, almost. Her guns, handgun and shotgun, were on a pile of clothes on a chair next to the bed. Kate noticed that she had been changed into her nightgown, and the meticulously folded clothes on the chair were her own . Throwing the covers back, she swung her legs round and stood from the bed, examining the pile. Clothes folded and stacked in order, guns ready for use. Someone had thought a lot about this.

"She did that herself," came a voice behind the girl. Gasping, she snatched the shotgun up and whirled round, squeezing the trigger in the same motion. Nothing but a click escaped the gun, and the speaker laughed. "You didn't reload before you went in, did you? Don't worry, it's an easy mistake to make." Kate blinked again, taking in the scene. Damien was seated on the bedside chair, where her father had sat so many years ago, when he had the time to read her stories and tuck her in for the night.

Kate gulped, furious at the invasion. "And undressing me? That was _your_ idea, I guess? How dare you? What gives you the right - "

He held up his right hand, bandaged and blood-stained, interrupting. "Completely her idea, i had nothing to do with it. I left the house after bringing you up. She wouldn't let me stay in the same room." He shrugged helplessly, as if to show he was powerless against Angela's wishes.

"Bringing me up?" Kate rubbed the back of her head, still sore from the steps. "So that was you? You couldn't have been a little nicer? And what the hell was that down there anyway?! My dad, and some... thing that kicked the hell outta me, what the - ?"

He shrugged again. "Probably coulda been nicer, yeah. But we're no saints here, not me, not you. Not nobody."

_So you won't tell me. Or you don't know_, she thought. "I guess you'll tell me next that Angela's some kind of monster, too?" she sneered, the memory of his disgusting bloody drink strong in her mind.

He laughed at this. "Monster? Well, I guess that comes down to who you ask." He looked suddenly serious then, stood up and stepped in close. Too close. With one swift movement, he knocked the gun from her hand and grabbed her throat with his own bandaged hand. All before she could blink. "And... you won't ask, Katie. Believe me, you don't want to upset her by asking that kind of thing."

Gagging, she gasped for breath, struggling against him. Pummelling him did nothing, he simply glared angrily into her eyes. "Believe me, you don't want to upset her." And just as suddenly as it had come, the pressure was gone, the grip vanished. She stumbled back, tripping over her feet and landing heavily on the floor. When she looked up again, he was gone, and she could hear Angela's footsteps hurrying back up the hallway.

The footsteps came to a sudden stop outside, and the door clicked quietly open as Angela peered into the room. "Kate?" she whispered, "Katie? Are you... are you ok?"


	24. Aftermath

Kate grinned up at the worried face peeking through the open doorway. Angela's dark hair framed her pale white skin, her deep brown eyes peered out from under her fringe.

"Katie?" Angela repeated, "Are you ok?"

_Can't let her find out what happened there_, thought Kate, she'd freak out, _and then he would be mad as hell._ Aloud she said, "Yeah, I'm ok. Just clumsy I guess." Shrugging in fake exasperation at herself, she clambered to her feet and went to the door. "I need to take a _long_ shower and have a real think about what the hell's going on."

Angela stood aside to let her pass, but frowned. "A shower? Uh... ok, then. If... if you're sure. I'll just... wait here."

"What? What's wrong? I shouldn't shower or something?"

"No, it's, uh... Nothing, you go on ahead."

Frowning to herself at the other girl's odd words, Kate closed the bathroom door behind her and undressed, twirling the shower tap as she went. Something seemed wrong with the pipes, though, she noticed as she wrapped a towel around herself. Instead of the relaxing, refreshing sound of running water, the pipes rattled, gasped, and fell silent. As Kate turned to look, a single drop of blackened water formed on the shower head and fell, glistening, to the floor of the bathtub. Nothing followed.

"...Damnit." she growled. Suddenly furious, she spun, yanked the door open and stormed back up the hallway to Angela. "You knew!" she accused, shaking a finger at the suddenly cringing girl, "You _knew_ it wouldn't work and you let me get my hopes up!"

"I... I didn't know it wouldn't work," mumbled the brunette, "I thought it might not work, but sometimes it works in the... in the hospital. You know? So I thought maybe it - "

"You _thought_?! Oh great! You just _thought_, huh? And you didn't _tell_ me?"

The brunette's shoulders were beginning to shake now, her voice breaking. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you mad. I - "

"Yeah, right. You didn't mean anything." Kate growled, shouldering Angela aside and heading for the downward stairs. "I'm gonna get something to eat," she said, not feeling hungry at all but needing something to do, "You just think about what you do."

"Ok, I'll try. Uh... Kate?"

"What now?"

"Do you think you might wanna put some clothes on?"

Kate stopped dead, looked down, and slammed her fist against the wall. "Damn! Alright! You just... stay here. Or something."

"O - Ok. I'll go wait in the kitchen. I'll.. I'll wait for you there."

0o0o0o0o0

By the time she had finished dressing, Kate's temper had cooled again, and she began to worry what would happen next time she saw Damien. She had definitely upset Angela now, and there would probably be hell to pay. She left the second floor in a thoughtful mood, backpack in hand, guns and supplies clinking gently inside.

As she entered the dining room, Kate saw Angela slumped over the table, her back to the door. Kate felt her breath catch in her throat. Was the other girl crying again? Injured? Dead? She stepped forward hurriedly, but stopped short as a sudden menacing growling arose from under the table. Angela straightened up. The last fragments of what looked like beef jerky dropped from her hand and were immediately picked up and eaten by the black Dog emerging from under the table. It chewed rapidly, swallowed, and began to growl again. Slowly, head down, it loped around Angela's seat and placed itself between her and Kate. Kate laughed lightly, hoping to dismiss the animal's mood, and took another step forward. The Dog barked harshly, stopping her again, and lowered its head. Its lips began to roll back, revealing long sharp teeth. The growling began again, low and threatening. Beginning to worry now, feeling frightened, Kate looked to Angela, still seated motionless with her back to the blonde.

"Angela? What's...? Is this a different dog from earlier or...?"

Angela turned, her eyes reddened, her face washed out. "No, it's the same dog. He was here when I came down. I had to talk to someone and sometimes it's like he actually understands me, you know?" She laughed bitterly,"I guess he figures it was you who made me cry or something."

"Smart mutt," Kate muttered. Louder, she spoke across the rising growling, "I came down to say sorry. I don't know why I... I guess I'm having a bad day, you know?"

Angela stared into her eyes silently, thinking about it. The Dog at her feet bristled, teeth fully bared. Kate stepped back, slowly, hands outward. "Easy, boy, easy. I don't want any trouble."

Angela laughed quietly. "It won't help," she told Kate, "When he's mad there's no stopping him. If you try to calm him, it just makes him worse." She turned, dragging the chair around with her, and sat watching Kate closely. Kate stayed perfectly still, remembering the Dog's vicious, bloody, and totally lethal treatment of the wolves in the wood. One wrong move could cost her everything. She felt her heart racing inside her chest, watched Angela watch her. The Dog continued growling, its white teeth glistening in vivid contrast with its black fur.

Angela leant forward and rested a hand on the Dog's head, slowly stroking its fur. She whispered in its ear, inaudible to Kate but perfectly clear to the Dog. "Let it be, boy. She said sorry, and I think _she_ means it. Let her be. This time." The growling died down rapidly, and the Dog rose and stretched out as Angela continued to stroke it. Turning, it nuzzled Angela's knees and licked her hand as she tickled its chin, then laid itself on the floor at her feet. She smiled and then looked up at Kate.

"Alright," she said, "I believe you. You meant to hurt me, but you..." she stopped, thinking how to say it, "You weren't yourself, I guess. I understand. There's something about this town that makes people crazy. Forget it. We all do things we regret." She glanced across the room to the kitchen, taking in the knife block, the first aid kit Kate's mom always kept there in a box on the wall, and laughed. "Some things more than others." She looked at Kate mischievously, a glint in her eyes. "Don't tell me you've never been bad?"

Kate laughed nervously, what the hell was all this now? "Well, yeah, I guess I have. I guess you're right, we all do things we regret." Curiosity overcame her now, so she asked the question, "What about you? What did you do?"

Angela's mouth twitched suddenly and she covered her face, almost catching a sob, but not fast enough. Kate regretted the question instantly. The Dog at Angela's feet raised its head, blinking up at the brunette. Seeing her posture, it rose, turning to Kate again. Kate gasped, ready to run, but relaxed as Angela brought her hands back down and gently restrained the animal, turning a wan smile to Kate. "I don't think I can talk about it, Katie. It's not you, just..." She put a hand to her chest. "It hurts too much to think about it."

"Yeah, I guess that makes sense," Kate said, nodding slowly and thanking God for her two close escapes. Two escapes, too close. "But I do have a question that I hope you could help me with. Just, keep the dog from eating me if I ask the wrong question? Please?"

Angela nodded, forcing herself to calm down again, "I'll try."

"What the _hell_ is going on in this town? I mean, I live here, I went to school at Midwich Elementary, I grew up shopping at the convenience store on Bachman road, Dad always fixed the car with things from Julio's Auto Parts on Matheson street. I know this place like the back of my hand, so why have I come back from a little walk in the woods and suddenly I find this whole... new town where the old town was, and you and Damien are just so..." she shrugged helplessly, "So 'blah' about it all, like you've been here years? Like you're used to it all. The fog, the monsters, the mind trips. What the hell is going on?"

Angela nodded, "I understand. The big question. Maybe it's the only question anyone has here. Until you get to the other question, the real one." She gestured to the chair next to her, "You should sit down, there's a lot to tell, and it could take a while."

Kate sat down, suddenly feeling the chill of the house, and tried to ignore the feeling. If she was going to figure out anything of what was going on here, she'd have to pay real attention. Angela started to explain, and in a few minutes Kate forgot all about the chill.

"I'm not like you," Angela said, and smiled sadly at a memory. Maybe, thought Kate, of a memory of Angela's first arrival in the town. "I'm not from around here at all," Angela continued, " and before I ran away from home I hadn't ever even _heard_ of Silent Hill."

Angela told Kate about how she had grown up with a 'difficult' home life, that she had run away after high school but been brought back, and had run away again as soon as she could. That time she had run to Silent Hill, where she thought her father couldn't follow her and drag her back again.

"I got lost," she told Kate. "When I came into town, there was a thick fog, and I couldn't follow the road anymore. Someone had boarded off the main road, so I turned off it and found a way through. But when I got to the town, I got scared, I saw... saw things in the fog. I had passed a churchyard near the town and I, well, I thought maybe she was already dead. There was no reason to go looking in the town, with all those weird noises, if she was, you know? I started looking around the gravestones, making sure my mama - I mean, my mother, wasn't buried there. I wanted to be sure I wasn't too late.

"While I was looking, a strange blond man came up to me. He was looking for someone too, but I don't know if he ever found her. He said he was looking for his wife, but he also said that she was dead. I guess he probably didn't find her."

She sighed tiredly, "Either way, I didn't see him much at all. I had my own problems to worry about. Soon after we split up, I went into town myself, and I found some of the monsters you've seen. So I ran from one hell into another. And the first one even followed me. Daddy - I mean, my father - he found me in a maze under the town, and James, the blond man, saved me. But then he started ordering me around, acting all bossy just like my dad had when he... when he wanted something." Her lips began to quiver, and Kate saw a glisten in her eye, remembered what Angela had screamed in the amusement park

_No, daddy, please!_

with that monster doing _things_ to her, and felt tears prick her eyes. The Dog lifted its head and licked Angela's hand, whining gently. Angela stroked its head, wiped her eyes, and tried to carry on.

"Maybe he wasn't even bossy, maybe I was wrong. He didn't give me my knife back when I asked him for it, I know that. He said he wasn't saving it for himself, but I didn't believe him. It was hot as hell on that staircase, and even he could see it. The town had gotten to him, too, and he was beginning to see the truth. He saw how it was for me. I didn't see him after that, but he probably saved my life." She bent her head, studied her hands as they wrung on her lap. "If I had held onto that knife, I don't know what I might have done."

_Sure_, thought Kate, _cause you're all about the fun with knives._

She looked up again, straight into Kate's eyes. "I left him there and went on up the stairs to the next floor of the hotel. I guess you can guess I was looking for another knife. If James wouldn't help me, I figured I'd have to help myself. But then _he_ came, and then I didn't have the choice anymore. I was so scared of him, I just ran. He chased me all round the hotel and out into the town. When I looked back, the hotel was just smoke and ruins. The fire took it to pieces.

"I just wanted to be left alone, I didn't want anyone to come after me. I wanted to find another knife and finish it. Another man would only want one thing, even if _this_ man said he only wanted to help me. But I had heard that before, and that man had been just the same. So I ran.

"_He_ caught up to me at the hospital near the hotel, Alchemilla. I had found a surgical knife, but there were too many nurses, they wouldn't leave me alone. I couldn't get the quiet I needed, couldn't find a place to just lay down and start to finish. That's when this guy showed up," she pointed to the slumbering Dog, now laying on her feet, "He bit the nurses, gave me time to get away from the hospital and run. But when I finally found an unlocked apartment and began to relax, _he_ showed up out of nowhere. Again."

"_He_?"

"The Dark Man, the one who chased me from the hotel. You know him, you called him... uh... Damien?"

"No..." said Kate, confused now, "that's what _you_ called him. _I_ just picked it up from _you_."

Angela frowned, then shook her head dismissively. Obviously it didn't matter, ' _he_' was still grating on her nerves.

"Anyway, _he_ showed up out of nowhere and knocked the knife straight out of my hand. I can remember it fell point down into the floor and stood up out of the ground. Then _he_ knocked _me_ out. The next thing I remember, I was in a hospital again, and I was cold, and wet, and naked. He had taken my clothes off and was just... _washing_ me in the bath room, with a sponge and soap, like you'd wash a baby or something. The water worked there, and still works in my room, that's why I thought it might work here, you see? I screamed, ran away as fast as I could, I knew he just wanted that one thing, the disgusting pig! But he caught me before I even could reach the door. He told me it wasn't safe for me to go out there. Like I'd be safe with him! He must have... must have done something, because the next thing I remember I was lying in a hospital bed, dressed and cleaned. Nothing hurt, though. Nothing was even sore. Maybe he really did just want to get the blood and dirt off me like he said. He's hardly even touched me since, though, not even when I hit at him for keeping me there in that room. He said 'it's for your own good', that he didn't care what_ He_ said, he was gonna look after me. That he was gonna make me better." She laughed bitterly, "I told him I had heard that before, and he just shrugged."

Kate was completely confused now, "Wait, what Who had said?"

Angela scoffed, "I don't know. Something about the his 'master' or something. Metaton, he said, or something like that." The Dog at her feet twitched in its sleep, then began to snore again. "I don't know about all that," said Angela, "but men always only want one thing. If they're nice or if they beat you up, force you, they just want one thing. Even after Daddy was dead, he still came after me, still made me need another man to save me from him." Her face twitched, and her next words were strangled in stifled sobs. "This town... it makes you... makes you remember things. Things you want to forget. Makes you face your past, even if it kills you. It probably killed James, and Damien said it would've killed him if he hadn't made the deal. But he'd never tell me about that, so I just live in my little room in the hospital. I never know what I can do, if he won't give me a knife and just let me finish it. I guess I could go out, find a gun and a monster and pick up where I left off, but I just... I just wanna end it all. I just want to get out of all this.

"That was years ago now. I was nineteen when I came to Silent Hill," she looked at her hands, ran them through her hair, "and I guess I still am. Nobody ages here.

"Damien said James had made it out, and had taken a girl out too that he found lost here. But I never saw a girl here, Damien must have been lying. Men always lie. I know it's been years, though, he brought me a drawing pad and some pens to write or draw with. Something to keep me from getting bored, he said. I counted off the days, and there have been so many of them. It's strange, though, not getting older. My hair hasn't grown, I'm never hungry. Time doesn't pass normally here, it doesn't change anything. Sometimes I'll try and go out, finish the fight, but I get so scared. I run away, or fall down. And he won't let me die, won't even let them kill me. I've seen so many others die from the monsters, even after he leaves them bullets and guns and clues, but he won't let me go. He'll never let me go!" She thumped on her thighs, startling the Dog. It nuzzled its head against her legs, and she stroked it, the soft fur seeming to calm her.

"Wait, hold up," said Kate, "leaves them _what_?"

Angela laughed, almost mocking Kate's reaction, "You don't think guns and notes just grow on the sidewalk? That's the only part of the deal he _will_ tell me about. The notes you find, the journals, he left them there. Or someone else the town called. There's different ones lately, but they fade away when you read them. Damien says they're just here because Alessa came back, and they'll go now she's gone."

"Now she's gone?" Kate interrupted, "You mean you saw him since she... since that Alessa girl killed the 'God' thing...? That monster in the basement?"

"Yeah," Angela nodded unhappily, "I saw him after Alessa killed the God in the church. He saved me from myself. Again. Him and that other man, the one you don't like, the one who shot Damien in the mall. They saved me from what I did to myself with the knife I stole from Damien. You remember I stabbed myself with it, right? He didn't even let me go then. He just took me back to my room afterwards, and the other man tried to come with us, but Damien hurt him, made sure only the two of us went back to the hospital. I didn't want to stay there, though, or stay with Damien, so I made him let me look after you while you slept."

"Hmmmn..." Kate sat thoughtfully. So the town had some kind of power to make you face your fears. But worse than that, to face your real inner fears, the things that made your dreams restless and twisted your life up. And Damien was some kind of... caretaker of hell, but also a kind of carer of Angela, but for completely different reasons than his role in the town. That was because of a 'deal' of some kind, but he kept Angela as a prisoner, or a pet, or maybe because he cared for her. Or... something. Could this get any more insane?

"I don't know," said Angela, "if any of that helps you or not. From what you said, and what Damien told me, it almost sounds like you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But Damien told me once about the guy who was here first. Sometimes..." she ducked her head shyly, almost smiled, "sometimes he sits with me in my room and we talk. Just talk. Damien, that is, not the guy who was here first. I don't trust Damien, but sometimes it's nice, you know?

"Anyway, the first, uh, the first 'victim' of this place? He _seemed_ like he was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. But he had been brought here by the town all along. Without that 'Harry' guy, this whole thing wouldn't have started. Without his daughter, the Powers of the town, the 'Old Gods' wouldn't have broken through. Damien says that without all of that, Samael, the worst 'Old God', couldn't do anything. And Harry? He only ended up here because he swerved into a fence on his vacation. So maybe there aren't any accidents."

At the mention of 'Samael', Kate became suddenly aware of a bitter, sour taste forcing a burning way up from her throat into her mouth. By the time Angela said 'accidents', the taste was so strong, the feeling so bad, that Kate gagged violently, holding her hands to her mouth in a panic of nausea while Angela stared in alarm. Kate ran into the kitche n and braced herself over the basin, coughing violently into the chrome pit. Nothing came out, though she wanted so much to let it go, whatever it was. That flower, that sap she had swallowed, it had tasted like this, but much weaker. Seating herself facing Angela again, she explained all this to the other girl, who looked suddenly thoughtful on the description of the taste and feeling, then sat bolt upright at the description of the flower's shape and color.

"He told me about that, too." Angela said. "He said that he had found a book in Alchemilla talking about a plant. Some flower called 'White Claudia' that grows wild around here. The book just said it was used in old religions sometimes, but Damien knew from the old days that it had been used by the cult here, the one that 'Harry Mason' had fought. They used it to summon things, he said." She frowned, "I don't know what he meant, but maybe it had something to do with the change the town had. Maybe it brought the 'other' town to here, maybe it can take people from normal life to this town. Maybe."

Kate frowned, "So you, and James, you took this stuff?"

"No, I guess the town didn't need any help there," Angela sighed, "we were just about perfect as we were, for the Old Gods."

"But not me," Kate thought aloud, "I had to be dragged in. And my dad, too? Is he in this... this screwy 'version' of the place? Did these 'Old Gods' drag him in, too?"

Angela shook her head, "I... I don't know. But if you've seen him here, there's gotta be something going on with him. Or about him. Maybe it's taken him, the way it wanted to take me," she hung her head, "for being bad."

Kate's fist suddenly slammed down on the table. Angela's head snapped up in sudden alarm and fear, the Dog at her feet jerking out of its sleep with a yelp.

"No!" Kate said. "No, that's not gonna happen. Whatever's going on here, this place isn't gonna hurt my dad. I've gotta find him, get him outta this place."

"I... I don't think that's a good idea, Katie," said Angela hesitantly, "There's something really really wrong here, and I don't think your dad will - "

"I don't care, I have to try! He's... he's my _dad_, you know? I have to _try_."

Angela nodded, "I guess you do. One thing, though, let me come with you? I know this place now. Kind of. I'll try not to slow you down."

Kate considered this. Angela sure as hell didn't want her to go looking for her dad. The other girl seemed to have real 'daddy issues', but wanted to come with Kate anyway. On a search for Kate's own dad. Another man, and her father, too. Really not the kind of thing Kate could imagine sitting well with Angela, not at all. Still, it wasn't like the place would be safe for either of them alone. It'd be good to have another girl with her, too. Too many men was never good, her dad had always told her to never trust men at all, and without Angela she would be just one girl against two men. Nathan had to still be around out there, and there was no way he could be trusted. And Damien, that Angela had called 'the Dark Man', was just too weird. Having Angela around could be a really good thing, Kate decided, and she nodded.

"Ok, lemme just get my stuff sorted out and we'll head out."

"Ok. But... where will we go?"

"We can start with the hospital, that's where they took him after the crash." Remembering it still hurt Kate so badly she could only just say it, but she kept on, "If I can find which room he's in now, we should find him there."

Angela stood up, looking embarrassed, "Alright, but I, uh, I have to go to the bathroom first."

"Up the stairs, at the end of the hall." Kate gestured . "I'll wait here."

"Thanks." Angela let herself into the stairwell to the first floor, and the door clicked closed behind her before the Dog could follow. It pawed at the door, whining, then lay down in front of it, waiting.

Kate laughed quietly at the Dog. Just when she thought she understood anything today, things turned right around and changed on her. The Dog was proof of that. Kate went back into the kitchen, checking the fridge and counter tops for any new goodies since she had last been there. Nothing, just a few loose coffee grounds next to her dad's old coffee cup. Kate and her mom had been too busy in the last few weeks to clear up properly, so the cup had just sat there.

Standing there, in the kitchen of her lifelong home on Levine Street, Kate sagged against the kitchen counter and stared at her father's coffee mug . He'd left in such a hurry that evening, there had still been half a cup of coffee in it when the police called. When the hospital confirmed the coma. When they set off to see him in his state of un-life. The letter she had written for him was still in her pocket, and pulling it out, she read it for the hundredth time. She had written it, read and re-read it, but never delivered it.

_Dad,_

_I'm writing this not knowing when I'm going to get it to you, or even how. But I know I need to say all this to you, and if I try in person it just won't work. Not because I don't love you and can't talk to you, but because I do love you and can never get up the guts to say it to you without being too scared of hurting you. Too scared of losing the connection we still have to do the one thing that'd save it._

_So here I am, at my desk, hoping that if I don't ever get up the guts to give this to you in person I'll at least be smart enough to leave it on a dresser where you'll see it or something. We used to be so close, Daddy, who would have thought we'd end up like this? How did it all go wrong? Maybe I messed up somewhere, but I've tried and tried and I can't figure out how or where or when, and every time I try to make things better with you, it just gets worse. Where you used to be so sweet and kind your temper's gone completely messed up. Half the time I don't know if it's even safe to be in the same room with you, and that doesn't just scare me, Daddy, it hurts me so badly I can't tell you._

_I always looked up to you, and even now I still try to. Even though you drink so much and shout so much. Even though half the time I've got no idea at all what you're trying to tell me or why you think it. I've always looked up to you, always been your little girl, but now it feels like you're not there for me anymore, like someone or something has stolen you and left some kind of sick robot in your place. And I know that's not true, and I know it's nonsense, and I know that you're still my Daddy and that you still love me, but I can't feel it anymore, the connection we used to have._

_I hope I get this to you soon, Dad, not because I want to hurt your feelings or make you mad. That's the last thing I want. I guess this is a message from the past, a letter from the lost days and my desperate try to find them again. I hope they're not gone completely, Daddy. I want those days back again, more than you can know, but I can't do it by myself. We both need to do this. Please, Dad, please help me find the way home._

_Your little girl,_

_Katie._

Saddened by the memories, blinking back tears, Katie placed the letter under the cup, handling the cup with the greatest of care. It was the only tangible evidence of her father left to her, other than the bloodied and broken husk in the hospital bed, the only thing that was really remarkable as just his. With funereal care, she straightened the letter, the cup, wiped loose coffee grounds off the counter into a garbage bin, and came back into the dining room, where Angela stood waiting. Together they left the house, the Dog trailing at their heels, its tail just escaping the closing door. Together they went out, into the dark new night.


End file.
